


Gladiolus

by transkakashi



Series: Lightning's Legacy [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anbu Hatake Kakashi, Angst, Backstory, Blood and Injury, Can be read separately to the rest of LL, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Developing Relationship, Drama & Romance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, FTM Hatake Kakashi, First Kiss, Gender Dysphoria, Getting Together, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Kakashi is a giant dork, Kidnapping, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Murder, POV Second Person, Romantic Soulmates, Soul Bond, Soulmates, Stand Alone, Trans Character, Trust Issues, basically every shitty thing that goes on in anbu, but hes trying!!!, dark themes, desperate schemes that somehow come to fruition, i promise its not shit second person though, kakashi can't deal with feelings, kakashi covering for him like normal, kakashi is a mess :(, sasuke being a shit, suicide aftermath
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-01-18 01:54:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 37,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12378453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transkakashi/pseuds/transkakashi
Summary: Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you.― Shannon L. Alder





	1. Strength of Character

**Author's Note:**

> Can you believe I still haven't finished this fic? I've got about 5 other complete ones that go after Gladiolus, but its still kicking my ass (damn you Iruka, and your 30k+ chapters that just don't end). Here's the first chapter, but I don't think I'll be uploading another for a while. Just be warned that the first chapter is a bit dark, but I promise you that it gets a lot fluffier later on. 
> 
> Gladiolus shows strength of character.

 

There is a man.

He’s tall, so much taller than you. He looks down with love in his eyes and you know he would do anything to protect you. He has spiky white hair just like yours, and everyone in the village looks up to him. You love him with the deepness that only a child can manage, someone who doesn’t know anything but the possibility of loving with the whole of their being.

The man teaches you things, and you learn them. He cautions you about the danger of a kunai, how it can harm you as well as those you are trying to hurt.  He explains other things as well; how to live, and how to grow. You see the wisdom and the compassion he holds in his eyes and feel only awe. You want to do as he did, be as he is. It’s more than a child wanting to emulate their parent – you _understand_ why he does what he does, as he taught you to value your comrades and never leave a person behind. A life is more important, more precious, than anything else.

Others see him, and they feel differently to you. They see him, and they see only greatness, only the legend. It makes you mad, but he just laughs and ruffles your hair and says, “Don’t mind them, Kakashi. Don’t mind them.”

Sometimes he’s sad. When you ask, he only tells you that someone important is no longer here. You puzzle over that for a long time. It is only after he is gone that you understand the pain in his eyes.

You are five and you are more adept at being a ninja than many people double your age. You think your father is proud, but sometimes you wonder if you are imagining the look in his eyes when he thinks you aren’t watching.

Classes at the Academy are easy, until they’re not. More than a few of the girls hate the kunoichi classes, but you think you might fear them. They try to make you soft and delicate and something you are not, and it scares you. Outside of the classes, there is no real definition of ‘ladylike’ that applies to you – you are training to kill people, and really, only the civilians scrunch their noses up at you when you do something they think a girl shouldn’t. But civilians are weird anyway, easily avoided. Why should you care if people put chan or kun on the end of your name? It didn’t seem relevant until you were suddenly put into an environment where everything is tailored to make you seem as feminine as possible. You try to talk to your sensei, but she just smiles softly and turns you back. It makes your stomach churn, and just because you can sew and arrange flowers and cook well enough so you’re top of the class doesn’t mean you belong there.

You wonder, though. Maybe you’re wrong, and you’re a girl, and you’re all girls, and there is just something deeply, terribly wrong with you. Maybe this is not how being a boy feels, and you should go along with the classes and wear dresses and arrange flowers. You don’t know. (You do know. But the way they look at you – well. You’re uncertain, sometimes.)

Then your father comes home covered in blood, and that’s not out of the norm, really, but the crowd of people who gather outside your home is. He tries to shield you from it, but you see anyway. You ask what happened, but his eyes, usually laughing and bright, are cast in shadow.

You learn, eventually. Your father stops coming out of the house. You avoid the insults thrown at you on the street as you try to process what happened. He always told you that people were more important than missions, but the people of Konoha do not seem to think that way. Was your father wrong? Did he not know this was how people would react to him saving his comrades?

You are six and the rift between you and him grows bigger, even as you graduate from the Academy. He comes out to meet Minato-sensei briefly, who is all golden hair and blue eyes almost as kind as your father’s once were. They talk so softly that you can’t hear them. That’s the last time your father ever goes outside.

Months later, you are the one to find him. Before you opened the door you knew something was wrong. As you searched the house, you knew something was wrong. As you smelt the blood in the air you knew something was wrong. You hesitate before the dojo, and some part of you knows what you will find inside. You open the door anyway.

Minato-sensei finds you the next day, curled up beside your father’s corpse.

It is hard to stay true to what he told you, after that. You take your pain and blame it on your father, thinking that if he had only followed the shinobi code, he would have sacrificed the others and he would still be alive. You lock the doors to the Hatake estate, and you don’t look at the key for years and years and years, locking away the memories of your father and his kind eyes and wise words as well. Minato-sensei is your only balm, your only stable point in a sea of chaos. You think you would be lost without him. You pass your chuunin exam, and refuse to admit you want another pair of kind eyes staring at you in pride. Minato-sensei’s blue ones will sate you, but you thirst for something else.

You cling to the code, for it is the only thing that makes sense to you. You hide yourself away from anything you think could hurt you, refusing to go through the loss you felt again. You push everyone away, and few people push back. Minato is one of them, and Gai is another. Later, you wonder how Gai came to understand you so very quickly. You didn’t even understand yourself, in those days. You never forget what a good friend you have in him, even if you don’t seem to appreciate him sometimes.

You are eight and Minato-sensei sits you down and tells you that he’s applied to get an extra two genin on your team, both a year older than you, who have just graduated from the Academy. You seethe for a good day before you realise that both of them will probably think you’re a girl. IThe revelation feel like a bucket of cold water has been tipped over your head.

Minato-sensei has always called you a boy since you told him to stubbornly when you first met him, and Kushina, when you met her, never called you anything else. Minato must have told her, and for that you’re extremely grateful. You hadn’t cared about what any of the other villagers thought about you (you did care. But you put up with them. Kushina and Minato knew; did anyone else really matter?) but…. a team. A team that you’re going to spend time with, who is going to eat dinner with you and Minato and Kushina, who’s going to go on _missions_ with you… Who’s going to think you’re a _girl…_

You make it back to your apartment before you shut down, huddling in the corner of your kitchen because it’s the furthest from the windows and door. You’ll have to tell them. But… it’s not like you’ve really _said_ it before. You know who you are but _if you say it –_

It’s real. You know it’s real. You’ve lived your whole life, and you know you. Minato can help, it’s not like you have to do this by yourself, but you don’t know where to start. You don’t even know if there _is_ a start.

You talk to Minato the next day, mumbling your words like you haven’t since you were years younger. Minato sighs gently and rests a hand on top of your head. You can’t bring yourself to look at him, terrified of what you might see there.

“Kakashi-kun,” Minato says. You are sure that the suffix is deliberate. Minato’s words are careful as he continues. “This is about you, and only you. You’ll have to tell me how you want to go forward with this, if you want to make it more official or if you just want to be out to your new teammates. It’s completely your choice.”

You nod sharply, relieved by his words. Reflexively, you count the kunai in your pouch, an anxious gesture that you’re sure Minato doesn’t miss.

“I want to tell everyone,” you start, unsure. “But not formally. Just… I just want them to know.” You look at the ground, staring at it like it has the answers that you want.

“How about we start with your new teammates and go from there,” Minato suggests, and you nod, relieved to have a plan to start with.

So, Team Minato gains two members, two members who only know you as you are. You don’t think much of either of them, but Minato-sensei has told you that you have to be teammates with them. You think of your father and turn your face away when Rin asks if you want to go out to dinner to get to know each other better. You pretend you don’t see the flash of sorrow that flows across Minato’s face, to be gone faster than a snowflake melts when it touches your skin.

Obito reminds you of –

You refuse to think about it.

Relations with your teammates remain strained, even though Minato keeps hinting to you that he wants team morale to improve. You could tell him that Obito is too focused on Rin, and Rin is too focused on you, and you are too focused on Minato for that, but you stay quiet. You know he doesn’t want to hear it.  

You are eleven and you know what it is to lie to soothe the feelings of someone you love.

You are twelve and the war is raging. Minato does not look happy when he tells you that you are to be evaluated for jounin status, but he does not look unhappy about it either. He simply accepts that more jounin are needed to replace those who are dying on Iwa’s borders, and that you are ready to do this. You do not doubt him, and the calm certainty that you’re ready means you aren’t surprised when you’re notified that you are to receive a promotion.

The night following your exam, you break into the secure records room to find your file. You leave with only one word changed, but it settles something in your heart, and you do not care that you could lose your imminent status if it is found out.

When your certificate of duty comes, it lists male as your gender, and you could not be more satisfied.

Your first mission as a jounin decides the rest of your life. You lose Rin, then you find her. You lose Obito, and you gain an eye that pulses to a rhythm of its own, mocking you as it bleeds your chakra. You learn to nap whenever you can find the time, to eat more, to hold a firm grip on your chakra so it doesn’t go pouring out of the eye. While you do this, you think of your teammate’s life, and you wonder why you weren’t the one crushed under the rock that killed him.

Obito reminded you of your father, and you realise you have abandoned everything that he stood for. You request a week off, which is hard in the middle of the war. You get five days. You find the key to the Hatake Estate and you unlock it for the first time in six years. There is still a bloodstain where your father died. You stare at it for a very long time, then you ask Minato-sensei for the strongest seal he knows. You close the door to the dojo for the last time and you seal it. It opens something inside you, and you spend the rest of your time alternating between crying, mediating, and thinking over what both your father and Obito stood for. What the implanted eye in your skull means. What you want to do now.

You leave as if a new person. You feel like a caterpillar finally emerging as a butterfly after a long winter. Both Rin and Minato notice, but neither comment. They have their own feelings to work through now Obito is gone, but you finally feel at peace with yourself. Protect your comrades. Your friends. The Leaf. Rin. Honour your father’s attempt to clear you of the hatred of the village and Obito’s last wish.

It all comes crashing down around you when Rin is kidnapped. Your heart pounds in your chest and Obito’s eye is swirling even though you keep it closed. Then you are fighting but you are not, and then your fist is through Rin’s chest, and the world grinds to a stop. With the Sharingan open, every detail is pressed into your memory forever, the whisper of her voice as she says your name, the last palpitation of her heart.

You dream of that moment for years.

You wake up in the hospital. Minato is sitting beside you, and you don’t have to ask. The way his eyes are open, and yet seeing nothing tells you that you did not dream what happened, and that your team is now down to two. Obito and Rin are gone. You close both eyes and refuse to come back to the world for a long time.

You leave the hospital and wonder who will be next. Somehow Rin and Obito managed to worm their way into your heart when you didn’t want them to, and the loss of them threatens to tear you apart. By the time you’ve recovered enough to be put back on active duty, Minato has destroyed Iwa’s  forces, and the war is pretty much over. You can’t help but think it wasn’t worth it. That the lives lost were in vain as the new peace treaty is signed, as likely to be broken as the last one was.

Minato is given the title of Hokage, and he has even less time for you. You don’t know what to do with yourself, until he calls you and tells you he wants you to be under his direct command as one of the ANBU. You don’t want to think about the relief you feel at being useful to the one person who you care about.

You are fourteen and you are accepted into the Black Ops forces. They give you a codename and a mask, and you have never felt more at home. Protect the village. It is the only thing an ANBU needs to think of when completing their missions. ANBU fatality rates are the highest in Konoha, and you wonder if the reason you all wear masks is because the Council doesn’t want the people of the village to know exactly how many of you die each year.

The missions are clear and you know what to do. For a few months, you settle into the routine of ANBU. Complete a mission. Eat, sleep. Heal the external and internal wounds. Complete a mission. Rinse. Repeat.

Then Minato assigns you to look after Kushina during her pregnancy. It consumes you, so that you spend twenty hours a day looking after her, even when she is with Minato-sensei. Kushina is important to Minato, and you are grudgingly starting to admit that she is important to you too. She wants you to call her Kushina-nee, and sometimes it is hard to keep it from falling from your lips.

You tell Obito about Kushina when you visit his grave. You later wonder if that was where the masked man obtained his information. There are few other places he could have found it. That drives the spike of guilt even deeper into your heart.

Minato and Kushina’s funeral is crowded. You understand why, but you don’t think they would have liked it. You leave early, and you sit on top of the Hokage Monument, considering what you will do now you have no precious people left.

You throw yourself into your ANBU work. It is the only option, and others quickly take note of you. You are disregarded because of your youth, until you are not. You don’t know how to welcome the bows and whispers. Your reputation is something outside of you, and it irks you. You think of ways to control it in a way that pleases you, and eventually buy a book with a brightly coloured cover.

The solo missions you volunteer for give you a reputation that seems to swallow any attempt you make to squash it. They tell you that they’re all suicide missions, but you keep coming back from them, whether you want to or not.

You are sixteen and you are promoted to ANBU Lieutenant. There are two Lieutenants – one controls the intimate details of each mission that’s assigned to each squad, and one actively leads the most dangerous missions that come out of the Tower. With Uchiha Kagura in the position as paperwork Lieutenant, you take your position as fieldwork Lieutenant – the position that has the highest turnover rate in ANBU, and thus, the entirety of Konoha’s forces.

You hold it for eight years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

With your new position, you’re given command of your own unit. All of the nin under you are now too distant for you to try and bond with them, and you are too well known for someone new to try it. At a time when you would not have minded a friend, there is no one.

Or nearly no one. Out of those you knew before you joined ANBU (and how long ago it seems; it has only been two years, but it feels like a lifetime) you have only really kept in contact with Gai and Kurenai. Gai does not understand your ANBU work, but he tries, in a way uniquely his. It chafes though; when you are out of your gear with him, there are fewer things you’d like to discuss than your career. Gai tries, but his loud personality is not something you have enough energy to deal with when you are off duty.

Kurenai is better. She is much calmer, and she does not ask you about your work. When you need a space to cool off, spending an afternoon in her company is an excellent way to do that. Kurenai is only a year older than you, and while she is only a chuunin, there are some things she seems to understand better than some of the jounin in ANBU. She offers herself as a safe haven, and you partake in her in more than one way.

In ANBU, there is no one, until the door to the locker room clicks open and a nervous recruit stands there, recently freed from Danzou’s service. You greet Tenzou with a smile, and he blushes and calls you senpai. Unlike the others who do it over the years, you do not mind. You have someone you are close to for the first time in ANBU, and you relish it.

You are eighteen and everything is as right as it can be. You are called to a Council meeting, and you wonder if they will ask you to take your seat there now you are old enough. But that is not what they want, and you leave them, bristling with rage. How dare they demand something like this of you! You want to scream, to fight them until you win, but this is not a fight you can win with your fists. The very thing you have worked for your entire life has come to turn around and bite you.

You know who is behind it; you know who on the Council hates you enough to try and take you out of play this way. You try to talk to the Hokage, but he looks at you with sad eyes and shakes his head. You wonder if he also wants you out of ANBU, if he thinks that this course is the best one for you. You spill everything to Tenzou over a bottle of vodka. His glass is untouched while you refill yours liberally. You wonder again if there is something wrong with you, for not wanting this. Most of the kunoichi take leave if they get pregnant, but the mere thought of you doing that fills you with a sharp kind of panic you don’t know how to deal with. You just know you won’t do it, can’t do it.

Tenzou has no solutions, but he is a solid weight by your side that helps you through the worst of it. You go back to the Council with alternatives. They turn most of them down, but you see their eyes light up at one of the options you present, at the possibilities you are giving them. It only makes you sick to see greed in their eyes when they think of this. They care nothing for you.

You are given a month of leave to recover from the surgery and you try to spend the time exhausting yourself. You are told strictly by your doctors that you should not manipulate your chakra, but you ignore them. If you spend a month doing nothing, you think you will go insane. Only one of them seems to care – she is kind, and her eyes remind you of Minato’s. Juuna tells you to find something to occupy yourself with, and suggests gardening. You ask her if she is a doctor and she ducks her head as she tells you she is only temporarily assigned to the jounin ward, but she is a chuunin-medic. You refuse to see anyone else but her for your medical appointments after that.

You try gardening, only to find that most plants need more work than you can possibly give them. You seek out Kurenai for the first time since you moved out of her apartment to talk about it. She must see how pale and thin you are, how tired you look, but she asks nothing after you say you are on a month of medical leave. She has her own collection of plants, and you spend a pleasant day with her. She sends you home with a cactus and asks you to stop by more often. You think that maybe you will.

You spend time doing anything but thinking about what has been taken from you. What need do you have for children? None. They have no place in your life. A part of you aches anyway, for something you cannot name and something you know you cannot have. You think you would be a terrible father. Your hands are too bloody and you are too damaged for that. You stop by the outskirts of the Academy for the first time since you left to watch the children at play. They seem so far removed from your lifestyle to be anything but alien to you. While you have no desire to have one yourself, you think that you might not have minded interacting with one on a semi-regular basis. They’re so small, so innocent. You still remember how your father looked at you. Maybe you could have one? In the future? You shake your head and recognise the thought as a luxury you cannot accommodate. And you do not deserve anything bright to lighten your life, whether it is a child or happiness.

You come back more determined than ever to prove that they are wrong and that you are suited for this. But on your first mission back, a member of your team dies. It rocks you a little and you spend a day in the forest, mourning. You refuse to split up your team while a replacement is found, and yet you cannot move without four members. You use your executive Lieutenant powers to arrange for your team to be taken off active duty and be given individual duties around Konoha until a replacement can be found.

You give Tenzou an in-village security detail, which normally means guarding one of the many buildings around Konoha, trailing after the Hokage, or watching Naruto from the shadows. You assign yourself a sheathe of papers the day after. Blue tipped scrolls, assassinations that don’t have deadlines. There must be thirty in the pile. They’re the backlog that Lieutenant Uchiha has been having trouble completing, and it’s what you promised him you’d do personally if he could find places for your team and not kick up a fuss about Delta Squad being grounded for a few weeks.

The man behind the desk tells you to come back when they’re done or you are too injured to continue. You take them with a heavy heart, and Tenzou looks worried when you tell him you’re going to be gone. He stares at the blue scrolls and squeezes your hand before you leave.

There’s a lot of self-recrimination when you come back. Tenzou sits next to you as you throw up, finally able to let go of the tension and feel the deaths you’ve inflicted with your own hands. You spend a few days recouping in your room, feeling absolutely no desire to leave. When you come out, there is a new team member. Her hair is as fiery as the jutsu she flings out skilfully, and seeing Tenzou pale in the face of it (“I use wood, Kakashi-senpai! Wood! She chucks fire around! How is this a good idea?”) lightens something in you that you aren’t sure deserves to be lightened. Miho grins at you and joins Delta, all sass and brashness, laughing loudly and often. It fills something in your team, and you feel stable for the first time in years.

ANBU is a bit more bearable after that, but you are still their Captain and they are still under your command. Miho, Tenzou and Genma all respect you, listen to you, and don’t backchat you – too often – and no commander could really ask for more. You voice no complaints, but you cherish the times when you and Tenzou are out of uniform, eating or drinking together.

You come back from a mission injured enough that you’re put on rest duty, which generally means that you and your team shadow the Hokage wherever he goes. It just so happens that you are with him when the final stage of the chuunin examinations is happening; you keep your eyes open as the people in the stadium cheer with those who are fighting below you, watching for any who might think to take this opportunity to hurt your leader. Miho flashes the ‘a-okay’ sign from across the stadium and you relax slightly, turning your attention to the two boys in the arena below you.

One is from Konoha and one is from Suna, both in their mid-teens. The proctor makes the motion for the beginning of the match, and both boys blur into motion. Suna lashes out with some sort of blade mounted on a chain, and Konoha simply slides out from under it, barely dodging. When Suna grabs his chain out of the air, the corner of your mouth twitches as you see the smouldering explosive tag attached to it. It explodes, and while Suna is down, Konoha darts about, sticking things onto the ground. You don’t know what they are, until a pale chakra barrier forms around the boy on the ground. He slams into it as he tries to escape, but the barrier doesn’t fall. You nod your head once; whoever the boy is, you are glad he works for Konoha. Sealing masters are not someone you particularly want to face in battle.

The Hokage looks prouder than normal, and you indicate your curiosity with a twitch of your shoulder and a slight tilt of your head. “I’m glad Iruka-kun managed to control those seals in battle, finally,” he says, eyes twinkling as he looks down on the arena, where the boy from Konoha – Iruka – is proclaimed the victor. You can see his eyes shining with success even from how far away you are.

Of course, you aren’t out of action for long. The solo missions become more frequent after you get back. It’s a bit of an oddity – usually ANBU Lieutenants are placed in leadership roles because of their skill in those positions. Solos are usually given to skilful agents who work best alone.

Of course, you being you, you’ve managed to excel in both roles. The Commander deals you in on more of the gritty, soul crushing solos, and you push yourself to succeed here, as you have in every other area. The missions are filthy, and you see see Miho’s concern and Tenzou’s worry when you leave without them at your heels. You don’t say anything when you get back, and neither do they, but you see their disquiet, as discreetly as they carry it. There are very few things you miss, nowadays. Your senses are sharpened from being in enemy territory, and sometimes when one of your teammates move when you aren’t expecting it, you have to stop yourself from reacting with immediate and overwhelming violence – your nerves are strung so tightly you can barely sleep.

One time, you are coming back from a particularly destructive mission – one of them had a kekkei genkai that stopped the use of chakra, and you had to fight, barehanded, against six ninja. You’d downed most of them before one got on the ground with you, and with a knife in one hand, he’d carved up your back as you’d strangled him. Each deep cut throbs with your every heartbeat, and you are tired and sore and chakra exhausted and all you really want to do is curl up in your bed with your dogs and maybe have Tenzou come around to comfort you with meaningless pratter about the gossip that happened while you were gone.

Of course, that means you jump into the wrong tree just as you’ve crossed into the barrier that protects Konoha, and find yourself yanked off your feet by a wire around your ankle. While that’s easy enough to get out of, the mesh that wraps around you a second later is made up of chakra wire and is bound in explosive tags. Stunned, you wait for them to explode and for you to be ripped into a thousand plus pieces, only to have nothing happen. You open your eye from the squint it had been in to look at the tags. They’re not active – just paper with kanji scrawled over them to make them resemble tags.

You test the mesh, only to find the chakra wire buffered by a barrier seal, most likely made by the tags. So you can’t cut your way out of it, and you can’t blast it with chakra, either. It’s a clever combination.

A sheepish teen in a chuunin vest comes out of the trees to hover at the edge of the clearing. “Um,” he says eloquently. “My apologies, ANBU-san. I was just practising my trap making skills. Nobody ever comes this way into Konoha, so I thought…” He trails off.

The whole reason you use this path into your village is _because_ no one else comes this way. You sigh to yourself; you are in the village perimeter, so the chakra surge you gave out when your foot had been taken out from under you would have been seen by the barrier team. There was probably an ANBU squad coming this way right now. If it was Delta (it was probably Delta; without their Captain, they would likely be on standby) Tenzou would shit himself laughing and Miho would never let you forget about it.

“I’ll help you down,” the chuunin says. The scar across his face seems familiar, but it takes you more than a few seconds of hard thinking before you place him. He was the genin (now chuunin, apparently) that Hokage-sama had commented upon last year in the chuunin exams. You look at the tags on the wire around you a bit closer, examining the barrier seal. You have an above average grounding in sealing theory, but you only recognise fragments of the tags.

“It’s just, I was going to do a working practice,” the chuunin continues. He looks embarrassed; his face is flushed and he won’t look at you directly. “The seals on those tags are active, and it’s going to take me a few minutes to bring them all down.”

You’ll have to get the seals off the chuunin. You obviously can’t get out of here without his help, and that means it’s a decent trap you’re in. Something that would be useful in the future.

To your chagrin, your team turns up half way through the chuunin gingerly disabling his tags. He’s been chatting on nervously the whole time, seemingly unnerved by your silence. You watch for a flash in the trees, and soon enough, there are three ANBU crouched in the boughs above your head.

“Hound-taichou?” Miho calls. The chuunin doesn’t flinch, simply taking one tag off at a time. You’re impressed, but you don’t show it.

“I’m fine,” you call out, the first words you’ve spoken in almost three days. Miho nods her head and drops to the floor, descending on the probably innocent chuunin. Tenzou comes over to free you, but you shake your head once as a warning as Miho pulls the chuunin away from you. In his hurried spewing of information, you learn that his name is Iruka, and that he’s sixteen, a chuunin, and that the Hokage is his listed contact. You file that away for later. Tenzou is examining the seals, and you can almost feel his concern. “Let the kid work on the seals,” you say, and Tenzou hesitates before bouncing off to where Miho is interrogating Iruka. Genma is still in the trees as lookout, his sword held easily in his hand.

Under Miho and Tenzou’s watchful eyes, Iruka unseals you the rest of the way, his hands only trembling slightly. You flip yourself as the net releases you, but stagger as you try to straighten; the chakra pulse that alerted your team used what little reserves you had. Tenzou is by your side in under a second, and you let yourself use him as support while Miho uses the tone of voice that scares half the corps to ‘suggest’ that Iruka come back with her for some more questions. Iruka gulps but follows you all as you head back to the Hokage’s Tower. It’s definitively not the way you wanted to come back into Konoha, because four ANBU members and a chuunin attract a lot more attention than one ANBU slipping back in after a mission he doesn’t want acknowledged.

Hokage-sama finds the whole thing hilarious, even though he retains enough self-control to not laugh in front of your team or Iruka. After everything is explained, he thanks Miho for her diligence and suggests that she and the rest of her team return to stand by in case they are needed for anything else. Miho nods sharply, even though you can tell that she does not want to leave you here by yourself. Iruka goes to leave as well, until the Hokage waves him back. You don’t have to try to not listen to their quiet conversation – you are far too exhausted for that. What seems like sheer willpower alone is the only thing keeping you on your feet. Iruka leaves a moment later, still eyeing you like he can’t quite believe he caught an ANBU in his practice trap. You report the success of your mission, and the Hokage nods gratefully before dismissing you to get some rest. You could probably check yourself into the hospital if you wanted to, but you are just chakra exhausted, and there is nothing they can do about that anyway, so you head back to your apartment, trying not to trip over your own feet on the way back there.

A week later, you tap on Iruka’s window. The chuunin looks up at you, and does not seem surprised that you are there. You narrow your eyes at him while he crosses the room; there was no way he could have known you were there, and you aren’t sure he’s good enough to keep his expression level like that when he looked up to see an ANBU perched on his window sill. He must be some sort of sensor-type nin, then.

Iruka opens his window and you slip inside his apartment, blinking in surprise when you feel the beating pulse of the wards accept you easily. You don’t move any further than that, and Iruka doesn’t seem to expect you to. “Tea?” He asks politely, but you shake your head. You ask for the seals he used, and while he blushes to think that an ANBU might have time for them, he explains that they have to be altered to the terrain they are being used throughout, in several different ways, that only someone with a solid knowledge of sealing theory could do it. He asks you if you have that, and you hesitate before shaking your head. It was impossible to be around Minato-sensei without picking up at least the basics of sealing theory, but you’ve left it alone for a good five or six years; it reminds you too much of him for you to be comfortable using it. Iruka apologises, but you shrug. There’s nothing either of you can do about it. He turns to pick up the tea he’d made anyway, but when he turns back you have already disappeared out the window.

The solo missions do not stop – indeed, as you prove yourself in this new way, they become more common. Darkness crowds you, and you spend more and more time at the Memorial. You stop visiting Kurenai, and dodge her questions when she shows up at your door. Her eyes see through you in a way that reminds you of Minato. You take active measures to avoid her after that.

You kill, and kill, and kill, and you stand in a lake of the blood of people who have died by your hands and wonder who you are now.

You regret a lot of things, but you’re not sure what to do about most of them. You lock your emotions away and keep them in a box made of diamond, hard enough that nothing will shatter it. You avoid Gai, Kurenai and Asuma; anyone who isn’t in your team is devaluated to you. The emotionless ANBU Hound is far, far, far easier to be than Hatake Kakashi, with his fuck ups and emotional issues. You try to stay as far away from him as possible, but he sneaks in sometimes when you least expect it; Tenzou’s smile, Miho’s laugh, Genma’s smirk; suddenly you can feel them in your heart. You separate yourself from your team as well, waiting for the hammer to drop, waiting for one of them to be the next one to die. You take more solos, and you begin to relish the risk as you accept missions that entire teams of ANBU might balk at. The man in charge of giving out ANBU missions tells you that you are crazy, and you tell him to give you the next scroll.

You are twenty one and you crash. You take one too many missions in a month, and you drag yourself back to Konoha with a leg broken in three places, both arms fractured, bruised and broken ribs, and a punctured lung. The Sharingan spins wildly in your skull, sucking chakra even as the alarmed gate guard finds you and wonders out loud how you are even alive. In the hospital, your team shows up, pale with worry. Juuna directs the other medics around you, but you are delirious with pain and too many soldier pills and the drugs they are now giving you, and you can hear none of it. You wake with people you do not know in the room, and you try to attack them, even with both of your arms and one leg in casts. You manage to seriously injure two of the attendees before Miho restrains you. They give you only jounin med nin after that, and there is always one of your team by your bedside.

You recover slowly. There are multiple psych evaluations, most of which probably say that you are fucked up beyond all help. They still give you back your mask. You are too good to let go just because you are unstable. Beyond stipulating that you cannot choose to go on any solo missions that aren’t assigned to you, they leave you alone. You think that your team are happy to have you back. But while you were away, it wasn’t like your team stopped going on missions; Miho took over for you while you did, and now they think she is too qualified now to be on a team with you. She is promoted, and you watch as she gets her own team, nearly as fresh as she is. You’re happy for her, but there is another hole in your team; this time, for a good reason, but still. There is a hole in your team, and now you are going to have to find someone to fill it.

The Uchiha is the youngest to ever be recruited into ANBU. You think that eleven is too young to be doing anything but yelling and playing with other children, but you keep that thought to yourself, shrouded so only you can see it. Itachi still has baby fat on his face, and he almost looks comical in ANBU armour that is too big for him, even though you tried to find the smallest size there is.

You spend time training him, and in return he tells you some of the secrets of the Sharingan that the Uchiha Clan might want to keep to themselves. You shudder when you realise you probably already have the capacity to form the Mangekyo Sharingan. Unintentionally, Rin’s death plays behind your eyes, her soft gasp and the quiet splatter of her blood.  You try to block out those memories most of all, but you do not do a very good job of it.

You are twenty three and too tired to be surprised when news of the Uchiha Massacre reaches you. You go to the Uchiha Compound and you survey the damage, the corpses strewn casually, children mixed among the elders and those of the police force. Some members of the clan who were outside of the Compound and don’t have the Sharingan still live, but their blood is weak; you doubt that there will ever be an Uchiha Clan again. The only survivor, young Sasuke, is put in the same, unenviable position that you are still in; lone survivor to a clan that is past it’s time. You hold the heir to your chest as your colleagues search for Itachi; you do not move to join them. You know he is far away by now. Your still, silent presence unnerves some of the younger recruits. Sasuke is balanced on your hip, and at your motion the search tapers off, ANBU members turning to the gruesome task of disposing of the bodies that litter the street. You take Sasuke and keep him in the genjutsu you have placed on him, where he is warm and safe. There will be reality far too soon for the seven year old, and you have no desire to hurry it.

You hold onto him for as long as you are able, but eventually there are medics who hold out their arms and look at you expectantly. You stare them down, daring them to hurt Sasuke, but hand him over regretfully. You loosen your genjutsu, and the boy falls into a normal sleep. You make sure you are not around when he wakes, and wonder if it’s for his sake, or your own.

 


	2. Admiration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When given, gladiolus expresses admiration.

 

You are twenty four and the Hokage tells you that he is releasing you of your command. You do not know whether to be angry or grateful. You hand in your mask and spend a night brooding, the Sharingan spinning, sucking your chakra greedily even though your eye is closed. You are not quite sure what to do with yourself, and how to deal with what the Sandaime told you, and what you think of yourself, now.

You try to vary your appearances in the Mission Room, but soon enough word gets around that you are taking more normal missions than nearly anyone can remember. The Sandaime told you that you were to be a jounin-sensei, and while you have your own misgivings, you will not doubt him openly. You take your brooding to a tree near the Academy and watch the children as they play at being ninja, balancing on monkey bars and climbing trees. A chuunin sensei comes out and yells at them to come inside, yelling some more when he isn’t listened to the first time around. By the look on the chuunin’s face – a closer look reveals him to be Iruka-kun, although he has grown in the years since you have last seen him – this is not unusual, and you find yourself doubting the Academy. If they cannot even have their pre-genin obey orders, what can they do? The older ones are eleven or twelve – you were jounin by then, fighting in a war and seeing, feeling, dealing, death every day of your life. These children look like they couldn’t knock over a pot plant if it stood still for them.

They all reluctantly file inside, and you resist the urge to peek closer. Iruka has some sort of way of sensing ninja that you aren’t sure about, and you don’t want to antagonise him just yet by spying on his students. Iruka pauses before closing the door after his kids, staring at the tree you’re in. His eyes are searching, like he’s trying to see someone that he knows is there. You slip out of the tree, further away, and he follows you for a moment before you suppress your chakra. He doesn’t follow your movements after that, and you mark the distance needed for covert surveillance; about forty five metres.

You watch more, sometimes keeping outside Iruka’s perimeter, sometimes not. It takes a month of surveillance for him to stalk over to the tree you’ve decided is yours. He stands at the base of the tree and stares up into the branches. You allow yourself to fade into view, and Iruka tries to hide his slight jump as you appear in front of him.

“Ahm.” He clears his throat and hesitates; you wonder if he knew that it was you lurking in the treetops. Thanks to your hair and hitai-ate, you are very recognisable. “Hatake-san. Why are you watching the children?”

He’s direct about it. You don’t think you would have respected him if he’d tried to dance around the issue. “Maa,” you reply, tucking your book away before Iruka can comment on it. “I’m just observing. Got to have a grasp on who they are if I’m going to be teaching any of them.”

Iruka looks very confused for a second, before he puts two and two together. “You’re going to be a jounin-sensei?” He asks the question slowly, with a level tone. Very neutral. You can’t tell if he approves or not. You shrug, and it must be answer enough for Iruka, because he doesn’t ask you to leave. You see his eyes wandering in your direction sometimes when you are both outside the classroom, but apart from that, there’s no contact.

Until there is. Some tokubetsu must have cleverly decided that he needed to betray his village, because you are innocently sitting in your tree reading when you hear a shout and feel a pulse of killing intent. Tucking your book away, you drop down from your tree and slip closer, using what cover there is to move quickly towards the Academy. Before you can cover half the distance, a nin with a bundle over his shoulder bursts from the door, Iruka in close pursuit. You move to flank him, ready to pounce at an opportune moment, but Iruka makes a hand seal and shouts something that you don’t quite catch. A barrier flares to life around the grounds, and you barely stop in time before you crash into it. The other ninja isn’t so lucky – he crashes face first into the pale blue wall, and collapses, dazed. Iruka snatches the bundle that he was holding and jumps away, and you come to rest next to the ninja, where you truss him up and rest your kunai at his throat.

After he’s blinked away the effects of running into the barrier and has had ample time to stare at you as you lazily threaten his life, Iruka comes back, minus his package. The school teacher starts asking all sorts of interesting questions, most of which concern who the nin is working for. When he refuses to answer, you casually cut him a little, causing a trickle of blood to run down his neck. Where the nin can’t see, you sign ‘under control’ to the two ANBU that have appeared in the trees around the barrier with the spare hand you have. They hover for a few seconds, before Bear asks you to lower the barrier. You shrug and point at Iruka; you don’t know how to lower it, but Iruka will.

You listen to his stuttered, stupidly defiant confession before you zap him with enough electricity to put him down for an hour or so. He falls, and you tuck your kunai away after wiping the blood off it. Iruka nods to you, and you ask him to take the barrier down. He does, and looks surprised when the ANBU fall out of the trees to pick up your prisoner. Iruka moves back over to the bundle while you talk quietly with the ANBU. The bundle moves, and you realise that it is a small, dark haired boy, his arms crossed stubbornly in front of him. Iruka has a hand on his shoulder, and you are almost apologetic when you ask him to come with you; apparently his barriers are soundproof, and they need two witnesses to confirm what the nin said before they decide what to do with him next.

Iruka follows you to T&I, where Yuugao and Bear explain the situation. A Yamananka comes in and you formally pledge that you are telling the truth. Iruka’s words are a bit hesitant, and you wonder if this is the first time that he has done this. When you are finished, Yuugao leads you out, and you nod at her before ambling along beside Iruka as he makes his way back towards the Academy.

“Thank you for your help, Hatake-san,” Iruka says, very formally. You shrug with one shoulder, your eye roaming along the streets, watching your fellow ninja.

“Please, call me Kakashi,” you tell him, because ‘Hatake-san’ sounds too much like your father for your comfort. Iruka hesitates but nods after a second.

“Kakashi-san. Thank you for your assistance. I didn’t want to leave Konohamaru-kun while I secured the ninja.”

“You could have done it,” you compliment lazily, and smile to yourself as Iruka ducks his head slightly in an attempt to hide his blush. “The barrier you pulled up was impressive.”

“I tried to time it so that he would run straight into it,” Iruka said. “That would have given me an edge, but I’m not sure I could have disabled him without him hurting the other students. For once, your lurking was needed.” Iruka raises an eyebrow at this last point, and you shrug again. It’s a habit, more than anything now. You know most of the children, and you are not sure if any of them are ready for their graduating test next Tuesday. Perhaps the best way for them to learn will be in the field.

Of course, you don’t spend all your time at the Academy worrying Iruka.  There are other people that you have neglected for years, and yet, when you approach them, accept you happily back into their circles. You doubt that you deserve it, but you take your time to start rebuilding the relationships that you can only barely remember. Gai seems to be the happiest out of all of them to have you around more often, and he starts keeping a tally of all the ridiculous ‘challenges’ that you two compete in. You usually choose things like jan-ken-pon, but he picks stamina, endurance, strength tests that have you keeping yourself flexible to try and beat him. Kurenai accepts you as well, and you are not really that surprised when Gai tells you that she and Asuma have started seeing each other – quietly, of course. You think that it will be a month or so before every jounin knows.

The pre-genin take their graduating test, and you wait for the team that you are assigned. You recognise them from their Academy days and your long hours sitting in trees watching them, and from what you remember, you are not impressed. However, none of the children impressed you, so you are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt – as long as they can work together as a team.

You fail them. They only wanted to fight, and cared nothing for the people who may have been on their genin team. You turn them back to the Academy, in the hopes that they will learn. You do not know if they will. If they don’t, Konoha will be the poorer for it.

You avoid the Academy for most of a year, going on missions with both people of your rank and below it. There are very few solos, which is refreshing. You don’t see your old team much; Tenzou was promoted to Lieutenant when you left, and he has been busy building a reputation as a solid leader who can plan efficiently enough to get both the mission done and his teammates out alive. You are proud of him, but it means that you have little time to spend with him. You learn your fellow shinobi like you once knew every mask in ANBU, and you start to receive the deferential nods and space that you didn’t realise you were used to until you left it behind. You don’t know if you missed it or not, so you take it in stride, like you did in ANBU. The entry for you in the bingo book flourishes, until you’re a S-Class ninja in every one you pick up. You’re kind of offended that it wasn’t there before, but hey. Everything caught up eventually, and your entry says male, so you don’t really have anything to complain about.

Time catches up to you, and you start sneaking around the Academy again. You sit on Iruka’s windowsill after a particularly trying lesson, and half regret sitting on the roof; you’re quite sure that your eardrums will never recover from the shouting that went on in the classroom underneath you.

“Hatake-san,” Iruka nods. You stare at him silently until he sighs. “Kakashi-san.” You eye smile at him, which only makes Iruka huff. You’ve developed a strange type of relationship over the last year; Iruka puts up with you, you hang out on his roof, you sometimes nab wannabe criminals together. You offer to buy him dinner, making Iruka look at you strangely. “I’ve got a staff meeting,” he says, but he sounds regretful. You shrug and ignore the twitch of disappointment in your chest.

You look around for a project to occupy your time, and find yourself thinking about the Sharingan and what Itachi told you before he slaughtered nearly every person related to him. The Sharingan has a several stages, and you’re only in the first few. It wouldn’t be bad to have a new trick up your sleeve, would it? You try looking in the Uchiha library, but there is a seal over it that you suspect only Sasuke can open. You recognise the symbol for blood intertwined with break, but that’s about it. The Uchiha District is unnerving to you; you remember coming here to find Obito when he was very late, or if you had a spur of the moment sparring session that you needed to find him for. You find yourselfoutside his home, looking up at his balcony. You don’t go up there, but you stand there for a long time.

You go on missions and spend time with the other jounin when you’re not training with the dogs or trying to figure out the Sharingan on your own. One night you’re out at one of Kurenai’s favourite bars (favourite because it sells more coffee than liquor) and Genma pops up at your elbow. It startles a smile out of you, and Genma takes the opportunity to start teasing you mercilessly. It’s half a night and more drinks than you can count (not that you’d let that on) before you find an opportunity to ask him what he’s doing out here. Genma just knocks back another drink and says, “I’m out.” You nod slowly, and don’t ask the hows or whys. What matters is that one of your team ( _pack_ ) is out of ANBU, safe and sound. Something small unwinds in you.

With only a few weeks to graduation once more, you find yourself in your tree. You don’t bother trying to hide your presence from Iruka, wanting him to find you for some reason. Iruka wanders over to you during a break, and looks up at you, clearly amused.

“You know, there are better vantage points than this tree,” he says. He’s right. It doesn’t have a great view of the kids, but it does mean that you can see into the window, to where Iruka teaches.

“Come and eat dinner with me,” you offer again, impulsively. Iruka opens his mouth, then blinks a few times. You watch his reactions, aware of the play of them over his face. Finally, he accepts. You pick a decent place that you know has good take out. Iruka seems almost cautious as he sits, eyes curious but wary. You eye smile at him, and that only serves to make him narrow his eyes. Iruka isn’t quite sure what to talk about, until you let slip that you were a student of the Fourth, and know a bit about seals. Then, you’re not sure if you can get him to be quiet. It’s refreshing, as well. You’ve always associated seals with Minato, but maybe if you listen to Iruka talk about them for long enough, the connection will fade.

Graduation day comes, and again, you’re not impressed by any of the students. You’re assigned three, and you try to put off your probably unreasonable expectations. Teamwork. They just need to show teamwork, and you’ll try to take them on.

You fail them. They fought between themselves, rather than you, and you are not happy with what they do. You send them back to the Academy with probably more force than you need to, then spend the rest of the afternoon locked up in your apartment, brooding. You know that it’s probably not healthy, but hey. You probably won’t reach thirty, so you let yourself mull over your thoughts for a while.

Three weeks pass, and the Academy opens again. You’re sitting at a tree, reading your book, when you see Iruka wandering despondently down the path. He must be more out of it than normal, because he nearly walks past you before you attract his attention.

He tells you of his troubles, of Naruto and how he is unsure that he is suitable to teach him. You listen gravely, wondering where the bright eyed chuunin so full of life went when you weren’t looking. You tell him that this is his crucible, where he either breaks, brittle and fragile after all, or comes out the other end stronger and better for his experiences. You tell him that you believe he can do it, and then you leave him to wrestle with his decision. This is not something that you can do for him, or even help him with. If he does not choose by himself, then he will be the worse for it.

Of course, that does not prepare you for the next day. You see most of the next generation of Ino-Shika-Chou, except Shikamaru tells you that Iruka went to find Naruto in the back hills. You know that there were Taki nin there yesterday; a general warning was sent through the jounin ranks to keep the lower ranks away from the hills. Combat that close to the village is not something that is taken lightly, which is why you know that if there are more ninja, Iruka will most likely not be able to fight them off himself, especially if he is trying to protect Naruto at the same time. Waterfall is known for producing very talented jounin, and if they’re this deep in Fire territory… You push yourself harder through the trees, finding a fresh trail and following it. It meanders, and the tracks are small, so you suspect they are Naruto’s.

You hear something metallic ring in the distance and throw yourself towards it, jumping through the canopy with the skill that only one born and raised in Konoha can have. You see a flash of orange, and shiruken fly past you; you have a kunai with an exploding tag out before you can think about it, and you watch it explode, knowing that it wouldn’t have injured any of those in pursuit. You just need them to get away from Iruka and Naruto; the chuunin has the young boy on his back and is looking worse for wear. You nod to him and he jumps past you, back towards the boundary of the village to get inside the barrier that protects the Leaf. The enemy throw a fire dragon at you, but you block it with an earth wall before flying at them, Sharingan exposed. A slight scuffle later, and they are all neatly tied up. You tug your hitai-ate down before Iruka lands in the clearing with you and tells you that he appreciates your advice. You look at the young boy drooling on his back and try not to smile. Iruka’s eyes have their sparkle again, and you let yourself sigh out a deep breath. Iruka will be okay.

Things fall into a pattern, and you find your footing in the ‘normal’ life of a shinobi. You go on missions, go out with friends, spend time at the Memorial, read _Icha Icha_ , and lounge around at the Academy, more to watch Iruka than the students. You go out for dango with Gai, Kurenai and Asuma, gingerly inserting yourself into a place that you had always avoided before. It’s… nice. Different to the bonding time that you’re used to (blood and fire and death), but nice.

Naruto’s antics become more pronounced, and it’s nearly every day that you hear of him pulling something off. The people of the village can only see damages and things that need to be cleaned up; they demand that the Hokage stop Naruto. You can only see stealth, planning, pursuit training; it takes longer and longer for the ANBU sent after Naruto to find him. You only smile to yourself when you hear of the newest prank that your sensei’s legacy has pulled off, and you pity the jounin sensei who is going to have to deal with him.

Iruka comes and rants to you over your now not so infrequent dinners. You don’t know if he’s asking for advice or not, but he looks run down and tired. You rest your head on your fist and look at him with your one eye, considering. You tell him of what the villagers think, and how they approach Hokage-sama about Naruto, demanding that he stop the young prankster’s efforts. Iruka nods as you speak, looking discouraged as you list the large amount of support for the side against Naruto. You speak of the petitions that are started, the complaints, the grievances raised by civilian and shinobi alike. By the end of it, Iruka looks like he wants to fall through the table and pool on the ground in frustration and more than a touch of anger. You pause to wait for it to sink in, and then you tell him of the Hokage – how he rebuffs any attempt to stop Naruto’s pranking, and to try and cool the heads of those who would attack the young boy. Iruka looks stunned by the end of it; you do not think he knew the lengths at with the Sandaime went to stop those who had a grudge against Naruto.  He asks why the Sandaime doesn’t just try to stop the pranks in order to give the village less to use against Naruto, and you shake your head.

You wonder if this is what it feels like to be a teacher when you ask Iruka to consider _why_.

Iruka leaves that night looking more thoughtful than normal, and you can only hope that it transfers to the classroom. You ache to support Naruto, but his blond hair and blue, blue eyes wake something in you that you try to avoid at all costs. He looks far too much like his father. You’ve been interfering a little in small ways over the years: warding his apartment and filling up the cupboards when he wasn’t home. But interacting with him – well, you think that it’s still beyond you. Maybe sometime in the future, but for now you’ll leave it to Iruka. You trust that he will find the right solution.

The pranks continue, but you think that Iruka’s yelling is not as fierce as it once was, and you see him ruffling Naruto’s hair once everyone had left the scene of the latest incident. You follow them silently for a few blocks, keeping out of Iruka’s expanded fifty five metre range, and watch as they fetch cleaning supplies from the Academy together. Iruka helps Naruto clean up, doing the things that the boy can’t reach or what he can do where he can watch Naruto to make sure he doesn’t slip off to wreck more havoc on the villagers. You sit on the roof of a nearby building and smile to yourself as they clean.

You are three days back from an extended mission, resting and taking the opportunity to read the new _Icha Icha_ when Gai bounds by, telling you that all the prospective jounin sensei for next year’s graduates were to gather at Hokage Tower to receive a briefing. You roll your eyes – this is the third time this has happened, and you’re not sure that having a meeting six months in advance is a good idea – but you go along with Gai anyway. If he passes the team he gets this next cycle, it’ll be his second genin team. His last all reached chuunin last year, and you can see the sparkle in his eye that normally means you want to be far, far away.

The meeting is the same as the last ones that you’ve been to, but Gai takes notes and nods and talks about The Fires Of Youth, whispering in your ear. You practically shunshin your way out of the room when the meeting is over, but Gai grabs your arm anyway, dragging you towards the Mission Room. He bursts in with typical Gai aplomb, and you sigh as you follow him inside, the stunned chuunin and genin around the room looking like they’ve been hit by a lightning jutsu. The jounin roll with it, used to Gai’s antics. Gai throws an arm around you and declares that you will “Show that the Fires Of Our Rivalry do not hinder Our Abilities to help the village; indeed, they only Strengthen it!” What a sight the two of you must make.

Gai goes to drag you into a line, and you manage to manoeuvre the both of you so that you’re standing in Iruka’s normal line. During the school term he only does mission room shifts three times a week, on Monday and Thursday nights, and Saturday afternoons. Since it’s about four o’clock and a Saturday, if Gai is going to drag you out on some pretentious A Rank, you’re at least going to talk to Iruka about it first. You look to the start of the line, where you haven’t heard Iruka’s loud annoyance yet when someone tried to give him a bloodstained, incomplete, and/or illegible report. It must be a good day for there to have been no yelling since you entered the Mission’s Room.

Iruka isn’t sitting where he normally is.

Your heart kicks up, and you take a breath to steady yourself before looking at the other cubicles. No sense getting worked up about something when he could just be sitting somewhere else. But thirty seconds later, you are certain that he is not in the Mission Room at all.

“Gai,” you say lowly, using the voice that you know attracts his attention because he knows you’re being serious. Gai turns his head towards you as you let your eye slide lazily across the room again. “Iruka’s not here.”

Gai does his own thirty second check. “Did he have a shift today?” You nod, and you see a flash of worry in his eyes. Gai knows that you are friends with Iruka, and anyone who you decide to spend time with is important in Gai’s books. He knows how few people you’ve accepted, and you know that he looks out for Iruka while you are away on long missions.

“I’m going to go ask around,” you murmur, and slip away from his side. You know few of the other chuunin, but the one you corner says that he hasn’t seen Iruka all day, and that he didn’t call in sick to let them know to get someone else on duty, which was strange. He says that he was going to go around to check on him when his shift was over in an hour, but you shake your head and slide back to Gai’s side. An hour is too long. “He didn’t report in today at all,” you tell Gai. Genma is on the other side of the room, and is looking at you. He probably noticed the slight genjutsu you’re using to get around people without them trying to talk to you. He signs _status_ and you sign back _situation unclear seeking information_. He frowns, but you shake your head slightly at him, which only makes him grimace. “I’m going to his apartment,” you tell Gai. Gai nods and follows you as you leave the Mission Room, both of you flitting across rooftops, Gai letting you lead. You force yourself into mission mode so you don’t do something stupid like panic – Iruka is probably fine and you are probably overreacting. Probably.

You land outside his apartment building silently, and you slide inside without a sound. Gai shimmers and appears next to you, and you exchange a glance with him before you knock on Iruka’s door. It opens as you touch it, and you know something is wrong.

You prowl inside. The wards that normally shiver over your skin when you enter do not greet you, and you see broken kanji smeared on the walls. Iruka’s wards have been shattered. You step up to one of the tired looking spirals and examine them as Gai checks each room. It was expertly done, by someone who knew how to deconstruct seals. Gai comes back in from the back rooms and shakes his head. You grimace and stalk into the kitchen. There is a plate with two slices of salmon, and a few bottles of sauce and seasonings beside it. A pan lies on the floor, abandoned. You know that Iruka doesn’t like eating fish for breakfast, so this must have been what he was making for dinner last night. He’s been missing since then, at least. You close your eye to contain the rage building inside you at the pan on the floor, the sheets of homework that are scattered and crumpled, trodden on. Gai comes to stand next to you, to look at the food left out, untouched.

“He’s gone,” you say, unnecessarily. Gai’s face looks like it has been carved out of stone, in a way that you know means that he is having trouble controlling his emotions. This could have happened over twenty hours ago; you know that he is trying to not think about the statistics for kidnapping and how their survival chances go down with each hour that passes.

“I will report this to the Hokage immediately,” he says, voice flat. “You’re better at tracking than I am.” And more motivated, although that lies unsaid between you. “I’ll bring back up soon.”

“Wait,” you say, and bite into your thumb, letting the pain centre you. You go through the hand seals and slam your hands into the ground, feeling the chakra drain as you summon your pack. “Pakkun,” you address the smallest dog. “Go with Gai and catch up to us with reinforcements. The rest of you, we’re searching for Iruka – he’s likely been taken.”

The ninken growl and snarl as they start going over every inch of the apartment. On the few occasions that they have been in the same space as Iruka, the chuunin treated them fairly and gave them treats and ear scratches. “There are four scents besides Iruka-sensei’s,” Uuhei whispers to you. Pakkun jumps onto Gai’s shoulder and the jounin leaps out the door. Biscuit snuffs near the door and then sits up, starting a low, undulating howl. You push up your hitai-ate and follow your pack as they stream out the door, Iruka’s scent trail easy to track.

You go over rooftops and through alleys, taking the shortest route to the walls. The southern wall has the least patrols, since it doesn’t have any gates leading out of it, but your dogs only hesitate for a second before running up the side. You grit your teeth and don’t attempt to hide your wild presence from the two chuunin who are standing guard. They recoil from the snarling pack and you among them with your unearthly, spinning eye, but yell for you to come back and explain why you’re going over the walls in such a manner. You ignore them; they’ll tell the others where to go to follow you faster than Pakkun would have to detour back to Iruka’s apartment. Your ninken could just as easily pick up the scent at the wall.

You bound through the trees, your dogs spreading out so they don’t miss any deviations to the path. Uuhei leads the way, her nose the best besides Pakkun’s. Bull brings up her rear, watching for anything she might miss while she’s tracking the scent.

Your flight takes you far from Konoha. You’re pushing for speed, but so are the people who took Iruka. However, they have a body to transport, and probably don’t have the ability that you have while going through the trees. Uuhei reports that the scent is getting stronger, and you resist the urge to speed up.

You find a campsite, only visible to you because of the heavier scents in the slight clearing and the soft imprints in the grass. You leave a henohenomoheji carved into a tree for Gai to find.

The trail grows ever fresher as you curve closer and closer to the Land of Rivers. It’ll take another two days of travel to reach it, but you don’t feel like letting them get that far. You find a slight hollow in a tree where you can all curl up together, and most of your dogs fall asleep right away. Akino sits on a low tree branch above your head, eyes bright in the darkness. You open a scroll and pull out enough ration bars to satisfy all your dogs and yourself, kept especially for situations like this. You lean your head back against the tree and let your eye almost close, letting your body rest. You itch to stand up, to continue your chase, but if they wanted to hurt Iruka, they would have done it by now. They’re probably taking him somewhere, to someone. You have no idea why, but you do know that when you find out, they are going to heartily regret sending ninja after your friend.

You open your eye when Akino’s yip tells you that someone is approaching. You stand up and stretch; Akino doesn’t look stressed or on guard, so it must be Pakkun and Gai. Sure enough, just as you’re tilting your head to each side to stretch your neck out, Gai lands next to you, Pakkun perched on his shoulder. The chuunin that you spoke to about Iruka not coming into the mission room is right behind him, and a moment later, Genma flits into the clearing behind them. You give them all a status update about what you’ve found so far, and Gai nods and tells you what happened while you started the chase; he went to the Hokage and used the jounin privilege of calling an emergency meeting with him. Apparently Genma had stuck his head into the room and volunteered to help with ‘whatever Kakashi needed,’ and the chuunin that had been concerned about Iruka – Kotetsu – hadn’t been far behind. They’d been just about to leave when one of the guards that you had startled had come into the Hokage’s office to breathlessly tell him about how you’d leapt over the south wall with a ‘veritable swarm of dogs.’ Gai tells you that you are head of this ad hoc mission, and you nod. As much as you long to stand up and push on, the other three haven’t stopped for several hours, and they need a break.

You poke your ninken awake and they spend five minutes trailing about your tree, shaking themselves and stretching. You give them another ration bar each, weighing what you have with practised experience. Probably about two more feeds for all of you, then you’d be out. That wasn’t something that you hadn’t managed before, but it would be a waste of time if you had to do it while chasing your quarry. When both ninken and ninja were ready, you arranged your pack, this time putting Pakkun as lead, and Akino in the easiest place in the formation. Your team members you arrange behind you, Gai taking the end position and Kotetsu right on your tail. Pakkun drifts back beside you to give you the update on the scent; he doesn’t think they’re pushing themselves as hard as before, travelling slower. They probably thought that they’d gotten away. You smile to yourself grimly as you keep a steady, ground eating pace that is faster than your targets. They might think that they’ve gotten away, but you’re ready to show them otherwise.

You’re stopped briefly at a river just before dawn, waiting on the bank as the dogs sniff around to regain the scent. You’re tense and impatient, and you know the dogs can feel it. Gai keeps giving you looks, like he thinks you can’t handle this. You take a breath and control yourself, shutting down what you can feel. For the first time in a long time, it doesn’t feel like enough, and you can still taste the choking ash of despair in the back of your throat.

Bull picks up the scent, and the chase is on again. Urushi tells you that the scent is getting fresher. The sun is high above your heads, and you feel like a ghost as you sweep through the foliage, moving silently and swiftly as you follow the trail. Your dogs start huffing quietly to one another, and you think you can smell what their noses can; a disturbance in the forest that shouldn’t be there, a branch moved to where it wouldn’t normally be, the stink of a human. You flick a look back at your companions; Gai could outrun you, but stamina was never Genma’s strong point and Kotetsu looks tired as well. If you’re going to fight, you’ll need them in top shape. Going up against four ninja who could sneak through Konoha and steal one of its members is not a force that you want to fight against by yourself. Genma will listen to you, but you think you might recognise the shine of determination in the chuunin’s eyes. He won’t back down even if you tell him to.

You come across another campsite, and the dogs sniff around it for a while. You look at your team, and keep moving until you find another good camping spot. It’s been fifteen hours since you started, and you haven’t slept properly in over twenty four. You quickly set up a watch and then drowse until it’s your turn to keep watch. Gai sleeps curled up at your back, Genma is in a tree and Kotetsu is in between the roots of a tree. Your dogs pile up around you, shuffling slightly in their dreams. Pakkun, Urushi and Bull go back to the campsite of those you are pursuing. You only let your group rest for a few hours. Gai has a bunch of ration bars that he shares, and then you’re off again, swooping through the trees.

The night sky stretches above you unbroken – there aren’t many villages in this part of the Land of Fire, the hilly area not suitable for crops, but the forest too thick for grazing animals. The scent trail gets fresher and fresher, until your pack slows to a stop. “We’re only a few minutes behind now, boss,” Urushi grumbles. “What’s the plan?” You gesture to your human companions and everyone gathers around. You outline the plan that you’ve been turning over in your head for the last four hours, with all the information that you have regarding both your ninken and your fellow shinobi. Gai listens attentively, and nods when you ask him if his part, probably the most dangerous, is okay with him. You nod once and then signal for you all to get into position. You’d like to have a little break, but you’d only be getting further and further away from Iruka and the people with him.

Jumping through the trees again, you see the flash of something ahead of you. You lighten your steps with chakra, so that you hardly even leave an impression on the trees as you move past them. Leaping to the left, you watch to see all of your dogs taking their own positions in a tentative circle around the target. Genma leaps off to the right, Kotetsu staying back so that he can move to wherever he’s needed in the fray. Gai meets your eye, and then smiles. You bite your lip and clear your mind as he squats extra low and then pushes off with amazing speed to hurdle right into the middle of the group of ninja ahead of you.

There’s an immediate shout, and Gai stops the movement of the target as planned. Now you just need to flank one of them and take them out while Gai’s keeping the attention on himself. You come to rest under a tree branch to give you cover, and push your hitai-ate up, letting yourself spend a few precious seconds analysing who the targets are, what abilities they might have, and most importantly, where Iruka is.

They aren’t wearing hitai-ate, but you didn’t expect them to. Your blood rushes loudly in your ears as you spot Iruka chucked over one man’s shoulder, lying limp and obviously unconscious. His back is turned to you, so that’s the ninja you pick to go after.

Genma must have picked a different target (or he knew that you would go after Iruka) because he strikes at the only woman at almost the same instant you leap for the man carrying Iruka. The eerie colours of the Sharingan spin over your vision as you see the man turning to face you, even as you finish your last hand seal and lightning sparks to life in your palm. It’s not a shot through the heart (Iruka is covering it) but it still goes straight through a lung, and that’ll kill him almost as fast. The man goes down and you shake yourself free of his dying body to scoop Iruka up gingerly, cradling him to your chest as you leap back into the trees. Genma’s target is down, senbon sticking out of her and half of her body burnt to smithereens. Gai is fighting the ninja who is probably the leader, by the fact that he can keep up with Gai’s taijutsu. You hear the slight puff of a summoning, and Kotetsu flies down with an actually ridiculous mace in his hand. Whatever gets the job done, you muse as you check Iruka over for injuries. He’s wearing his standard chuunin gear, and there are several bruises over his face that tells you that he did not go with them easily. You touch a swollen spot on his head and wince. It’s more than likely that’s why he’s unconscious. As soft whistle brings four of your eight ninken to guard Iruka while you flit through the trees to get an edge on Gai’s target. Kotetsu looks like he can handle the last nin, and Genma is turning to assist him anyway.

You keep the Sharingan open, but leap down to kick out the lead ninja’s legs instead of going after him with a raikiri – you need at least one of them alive so you can interrogate them. He hops over your swipe easily, but barely avoids Gai’s follow up punch. The both of you work seamlessly together, and the nin is put entirely on the defensive as he wildly tries to look for an opportunity to escape. You lazily duck under a swipe of his kunai and fold your hands together in a swift set of seals, taking a breath in and breathing out chakra. It condenses into a sticky substance that sloshes over your opponent’s feet before setting, turning into hard stone. Gai leaps back just in time to avoid getting stuck, but the ninja isn’t going anywhere fast.

You turn to Genma and Kotetsu, but their opponent is down as well. You tilt your head to Gai, asking him to watch over the one you’d captured alive, and hop back up to Iruka. You motion for your ninken to spread out again to form a perimeter, and they all jump away quietly. You leap down to the forest floor and lay Iruka out gingerly, trying not to move his head any more than necessary. Genma immediately comes over and his hands start glowing a soft green as he checks Iruka over for injuries that you can’t see.

After doing a perimeter sweep and checking with the ninken to make sure that you found all of them, you allow yourself to relax a little. Genma is still healing Iruka, but he doesn’t look stressed, so you can only assume that he’s fine. Genma wouldn’t keep something like that from you. You pick up the bodies and put them all together, pulling out a scroll from your vest. You raise an eyebrow at your captive as you smoothly seal his companions inside the scroll, and then tuck it back into your flak vest. He grits his teeth, but doesn’t say anything.

Gai is still standing next to him, keeping watch as you secure the area and making sure that your captive doesn’t try anything funny. You wander back over to him and tug your hitai-ate a little to make it sit more comfortably. It has the added effect of making your captive flinch, and you try not to grin at him.

“Bring him back to Konoha?” You suggest. Gai nods, and you sigh. Now you are the one who is slowed because of the prisoner – not that you mind all that much. It’ll mean that Iruka doesn’t have to travel fast while injured.

“You’ll never get anything out of me,” the ninja spits, but he’s clearly scared. “Not that it’ll matter anyway; I’ll be surprised if there’s even a village to get back to when we arrive!” You exchange a worried glance with Gai, and Genma twitches in your peripheral vision. “You dirty Konoha bastards.”

“Hmm,” you hum pleasantly as you lean in. “I’m fairly certain that our village will be there when we get there. And you can have a nice visit to T&I to tell them what you know.” The ninja pales, but bares his teeth at you.

“It won’t matter – I hope all the people you care about are set on fire and burn to death while screaming your name. I hope you get there in time to see them die. Fuck you.”

You purse your lips and tug Gai back a few steps. “I don’t know if he’s just spouting shit, but I don’t want to take any chances. We should get back to Konoha as soon as we can.”

“Iruka won’t be able to move very quickly,” Genma hisses. He’s still holding a palm of green chakra over Iruka’s head. “He’s got a severe concussion, and when he wakes up he’s going to be very confused. He can’t travel like that.”

“Take the others,” you murmur. “I’ll look after Iruka.” Gai looks at you, the pinch between his eyebrows that means he thinks you’ve got another terrible idea that he thinks will get you killed. “I mean it,” you whisper quickly, getting in your argument before he has a chance to rebut you. “Genma will finish healing him, and then he’ll just need rest. My dogs are all tired out, so they’d appreciate a break before we head back. And my chakra isn’t exactly high right now – I’m keeping the summoning up, and I used the Sharingan. Gai. Let me do this. You can move faster without us; take him back as quick as you can, get the intel home. That’s what matters.”

Gai grimaces, but nods. You sigh, and watch as he breaks the prisoner out of his stone prison, but keeps his legs locked together. Gai chucks him over his shoulder, and Genma stands up, obviously not happy about leaving Iruka behind. When you ask, Genma says that he should wake up soon, and that he just needs rest. You nod and watch them take off, blurs in the trees.

Alone, you sigh. You motion for your dogs to find a place to rest, and they all streak off through the trees. You settle yourself down next to Iruka, watching him breathe. The bruises around his face have faded, and when you run your hand along the back of his head the massive lump that was there is barely noticeable. He’s probably still going to have a massive headache when he wakes up.

You sit in silence and watch him and think. Why did you stay behind? Sure, you’re tired, but you could make the sprint back to Konoha and fight with the reserves you’ve got now. It’d probably land you a few weeks in hospital, but you could do it. Why did you want to push yourself so hard to get to him? It wasn’t a tactically sound decision; if the nin had been stronger, you might have been a touch too tired to deal with them. Why can you still feel the rage roiling inside you; why do you wish that you could have killed all four of the ninja that dared to think that they could have him? You’ve had comrades that were captured before, who were in more dangerous situations that Iruka had been in, at least until he got to where he was going.

_Why?_

You can’t take your eyes from Iruka’s sleeping face.

Oh dear.                                                                                                                                                                                      

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus, Kakashi has realised that he's got feelings for Iruka. Took him long enough, geez. Still not going to be updating this regularly, but I'm in a good mood right now and since it's the holidays, I hope you all enjoyed this update. I've been writing Horizon: Zero Dawn fics (the BEST game I've played in my goddamned life) and I've recently reread bnha so I'm in bakudeku hell once again (please pray for me....) so yeah, Naruto isn't top of my list rn. However gladiolus is about 90% written!! So this will be finished, for sure. In the mean time... since gladiolus isn't finished, would yall like some of the one shots that I've written in this verse? I've got some good teen Kakashi/Kurenai done, as well as the What Happened To Sasuke fic that are both finished. So, let me know what you think


	3. Sincerity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Those who give gladiolus are trying to express their sincerity.

 

You stare at Iruka for another few minutes and ponder your revelation. You may like Iruka as more than just a friend that you kinda stalk and have dinner with once or twice a week, if your timetable allows for it. You always stand in his line in the Mission Room, even if it’s the busiest, for the chance to talk to him. You actually cook when he comes to your apartment, as infrequently as that happens. You’re not sure who the last person you cooked for was. You enjoy provoking him, knowing that his over the top reactions are just for show, you like the way his face lights up when one of his kids get something in class, you love the way he doesn’t take any of your shit, deals it back to you just to show you how ridiculous you’re being.

Pakkun comes back and tells you about a small crevice that they’ve found that should be able to keep you both out of sight until Iruka can move by himself. You nod, and then don’t move, looking at him morosely.

Pakkun sighs. “You finally figure it out, huh kid?”

It must be _really_ bad if Pakkun’s calling you kid. He hasn’t done that regularly since you were fourteen. You shrug one shoulder, and then gingerly pick Iruka up, very careful to avoid moving his head, and follow Pakkun as he meanders through the trees at ground level.

Of course, that’s when Iruka stirs. He blinks open his eyes and his pupils contract and expand for a few seconds before focusing on you.

“Ka…kashi?” Iruka says, very slowly. “What? Where…”

“You’re fine,” you tell him softly. “I realised that you weren’t where you were supposed to be and came and found you. You don’t have to worry about the people who took you anymore.”

Iruka continues to blink, then reaches up to rub his head, grimacing as he touches the bump there. As you follow Pakkun through the trees, the early sun starts to light the forest, casting uneven shadows along the ground. Iruka slowly comes back to himself, and it lets you know how out of it he is when he only starts wriggling fifteen minutes after he comes to. “Are you carrying me?” Iruka asks, and you aren’t sure if he sounds offended or confused. You don’t answer, and you don’t let him out of your arms. Iruka quiets when it becomes clear that you aren’t going to let him down and walk for himself. He gingerly rests his head on your shoulder and you try not to shiver when you feel his breath on your neck.

You see a slight movement out of the corner of your eye, and it resolves itself into Uuhei. She comes up to trot next to you, and Shiba appears next, tiredly dragging her paws as she falls into step with Uuhei. You all follow Pakkun, and you don’t see the cave that they’ve found until you’re wondering why Pakkun’s stopped walking.

You duck inside and find that you can only just stand up. Iruka still looks dazed, and he sits where you put him without complaint. You whistle softly, and all your dogs trot over to sit in front of you. They all look tired and worn out and you sigh softly. Seven of them go back to sit with Iruka, and Guruko sits down by the mouth of the cave, snuffling softly as he takes up the watch. You won’t sleep either, but having an extra nose and pair of eyes is good as well. The rest of the pack will sleep, and will be ready to go when you need them. You scout around the area and bring back a few rocks and branches that you use to hide the entrance to your lair a little more. Happy with the camouflage that you’ve created, you duck inside the crevice and settle yourself down next to Iruka. It’s been almost an hour since he’s come around, and he looks a lot more lucid now than when he first woke up. Pakkun crawls into your lap when you sit down, and you stroke his ears almost instinctively. Uuhei is curled up at Iruka’s side, her head nestled against his hip.

“What happened?” He asks quietly. You look at him contemplatively, not sure how to reply for a few long seconds. Your recent re-evaluation of your relationship is rattling around the back of your mind, but you do what you do best – you tuck it away to think about later, and start talking as if you’re debriefing to Iruka. You run through the series of events clinically, not saying anything about how you felt when you realised that Iruka had been taken, your dry mouth and your pounding heart, your oily desire to kill his kidnappers. Iruka listens attentively, and his eyebrows pinch together when you’re done. “Shouldn’t you have gone back to Konoha? Kotetsu could have looked after me. You’re needed, if there’s going to be trouble. You’re one of the most skilled jounin in the village.” Iruka looks worried, and you quiet him with the same explanation that you gave Gai. Iruka ponders over that for a few seconds, but he doesn’t look convinced. His emotions are easy to watch as they play across his face; a touch of confusion, disbelief. For a moment of icy doubt, you are certain that he is going to call you out on your lie; but then he shakes his head and looks down at his hands, folded loosely in his lap.

“I would tell you to sleep, except that you probably shouldn’t with a concussion,” you say lowly. “Genma’s one of the best healers that I know, but that’s just common sense.”

Iruka nods once, and looks out the small entrance of the cave pensively, staring past you. You lean your head back against the wall of the cave and let your one eye droop half closed. From what you know of Iruka, you can tell that he is tense; his shoulders are tight, he won’t look at you and he chews his lip occasionally. The kidnapping attempt had scared him, you can’t say you’re surprised. Any attempt on your life most likely wouldn’t be a kidnapping, but if your assailants got anywhere near as close as Iruka got to being whisked away forever, you’d be very worried as well.

“It seems like I have you to thank for my freedom then,” Iruka sighs. “If you hadn’t noticed that I was missing…”

You try not to shiver as unbidden thoughts invade you. “Do you know why they wanted you? Piss off any important people lately?” If you have some type of motive, then it will make hunting down the people who did this easier. The silence stretches on longer than just Iruka thinking things over, and you feel a spike of unease. Iruka must know why they wanted to take him then; and by his silence, he either doesn’t want you to know, or he thinks it might be dangerous to you. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” you murmur softly. Iruka sighs and then shakes his head.

“No, I don’t suppose it matters. You must know by now that I’m a sensor-type nin.”

“Yeah, when you kept finding me out in different trees around the Academy,” you mutter, and are rewarded with Iruka’s laugh.

“Ahh, yes I don’t suppose that helped. My skills are quite extensive – I’m probably the most skilled sensor-type nin in Konoha. I can… it’s kind of complicated, how I see people. It’s like the people that I can see have their chakra layered over them, but I can also feel the people all around me that I can’t see…” He trails off and shrugs.

“To sixty five metres,” you say. Iruka blinks and looks at you. You lift your eyebrow. “That’s the radius that I always kept out of when I followed you without you knowing about it. Sixty five metres.”

Iruka takes a few seconds to struggle between indignant and impressed. He finally settles on looking exasperated. “Well. I can’t say I’m that surprised, honestly.”

“It mostly happened when we didn’t know each other yet,” you say, an implied apology in your words. Iruka pauses, but concedes with a dip of his head.

“I hadn’t measured it as such,” Iruka continues on. “But yeah, about sixty metres sounds about right. I’ve been trying to expand my range lately, and I’m getting a clearer image of everything around me.” He pauses, eyes unfocused. “If I concentrate, I can do it to a much larger area.”

“How much?” You ask, curious. Iruka’s ability sounds like it could be very useful, especially if he could sense ninja who had their chakra cloaked. It also sounded like the Byakugan – you wonder if the Hyuuga knew about the extent of Iruka’s abilities.

“About half of the Land of Fire,” Iruka says, shrugging it off like that wasn’t kilometres and kilometres of land. “But it’s difficult, and I’ve nearly died of chakra exhaustion from doing it several times.” You look at him in concern, but Iruka isn’t looking at you anymore. “So, that’s why they wanted me. It’s one of the reasons I became a teacher, as well. I love the kids, and my ability means that I can keep a very close eye on them, but I think my skills are more suited to a village lifestyle, defending instead of attacking. I stay as close to the village as I can, normally. Going on long missions is just painting a target on my back; I’m not really that strong, but if they knew about me, a lot of powerful people would probably want to exploit me.”

“Just because your ability isn’t combat oriented doesn’t mean that you aren’t strong,” you tell him, voice reproachful. If there’s one thing you learned in ANBU, it was that every skill comes in handy, no matter how frivolous they seemed in the past. You still remember the time Miho’s fascination with Wave Country fashion, history and language meant that Delta escaped without combat from a very compromised situation without having to blow their cover. “Besides, that sounds like it could be used in numerous ways, especially in defence. Are you an active part of the Barrier Team?”

Iruka grimaces. “I trained and went through all the necessary paperwork for it, but when I got there. Well. It wasn’t a pretty picture. Turns out I’m not really compatible with that type of tech, so I just head over there when I’m needed for an emergency.”

Hmm. You turn that over in your mind for a few long seconds before accepting it. You’ve seen Iruka at work in the Academy, and he’s good. Most of the classes that he teaches graduate, and he watches out for them in ways that you know the other teachers don’t. He seems to recognise the inherent dangers of just being in a ninja village and in the Academy as well. You’re impressed by the foresight that he has regarding the place – you suspect that there are numerous layers of wards and barriers surrounding the building and the grounds as well as the one that you’ve seen tripped.

You fall mostly silent after that, tuning your senses to the outside of the cave and any people that may be coming. You talk quietly sometimes, but other times just lets the silence between you lie undisturbed. Guruko is still on watch, although from what you’ve heard tonight, Iruka is probably the best alarm that you can have. The morning light fades into noon sunlight, and just past midday, Iruka rests his head on your shoulder and falls asleep. It’s been nearly six hours, so you let him, knowing that he’d be worn out and would need the rest for your travel home. Guruko comes back in and you send Pakkun out to guard, ignoring his mumbled complaints. Iruka is very warm next to you, and you probably wait longer than necessary to wake him up.

You click your tongue, and most of the ninken stir slightly. It’s your version of a prod in the side – they know you’ll be moving soon, but there’s no rush. Iruka stirs when Uuhei leaves his side to go outside, a few dogs trailing after her. You don’t comment on the head leaning, and neither does he. Closeness on missions isn’t something that can always be avoided, and if you had maybe enjoyed that a little more than you were supposed to, well. No one would ever need to know.

You pull out your handy reservoir of ration bars, and your ninken swallow them down nicely. Iruka sighs when you hand him one, but he dutifully starts trying to tear it to pieces big enough to swallow. You eat with the long practise of years, something perfected at three am when you’re crouched in a tree watching the target that Konoha’s finest have decided needs a convenient hole in the chest.

The dogs are mostly rested, but they’re still a drain on your chakra; every moment you keep them here is a steady loss to you, like a carton with a tiny hole in it. You look at your dogs, and hold up four fingers. They scuffle for a few seconds, but Guruko, Akino, Shiba and Urushi dissipate themselves. Pakkun jumps to his normal spot on your shoulder, Uuhei takes up a place next to Iruka, Bull takes the lead and Biscuit the tail.

“Why didn’t you do that earlier?” Iruka asks, as you stand outside your small cave. You do a final sweep of the area to make sure that no evidence of your stay remains before jumping up into the trees and answering Iruka’s question.

“If I’d needed them during the night, it would have cost more chakra to summon them back, and it would have taken more time. And I’ve only got one summoning scroll on me – I didn’t leave my apartment yesterday thinking that I’d be going on a chase throughout the forest. If they’re already on the physical plane, I can incorporate them into my jutsu, so summoning them would just take longer and eat up more chakra. And they were all keeping watch; you’d be surprised what humans can miss.”

Iruka nods at your explanation as you look at the steadily rising sun and set your course so you’re headed on as straight as possible course back to Konoha. You adopt a casual pace, and set yourself to Iruka’s when he flies past you. You don’t know how long he’ll be able to keep it up, but it’ll do for now. Since you know Iruka’s going to be okay, you’re feeling anxious about the village. You felt like it was the right decision at the time, but now you’re not so sure. You grimace and shake those thoughts off, focusing on the way your fingers scrape against wood as you chakra jump through the woods. The rest of your team are hours ahead of you, but they will have stopped to rest as well.

You exchange soft words occasionally, and Iruka tries to start up a game of Which-Ninken-Am-I-Thinking-Of, but mostly you’re both on the lookout for anyone that might be in this area that isn’t friendly. Pakkun had put you on Gai’s trail, and you stop where they stopped for a short break, letting the dogs lap up some water at a nearby creek. Then you’re back to chakra jumping, and your legs are letting you know that they’re not appreciating this extended use of chakra through them. You ignore them and push through whatever pain they try to send, which honestly isn’t a lot. You’ve gotten used to not having to run for days straight on missions. (Weak, you’ve gotten weak.)

The sun has set by the time you land gratefully at the village gate. Iruka thumps down beside you, and you try not to wince at the noise he makes. You flick your fingers, and all the ninken but Pakkun dissipate themselves. You tuck your hands into your pockets and wander up to the gate guards. You’ve been stressing internally for the last hour, but Pakkun had muttered that he didn’t smell any smoke, and that there would be some if the village was in danger. The guards let you through, and you meander, but don’t rush, towards the Hokage Tower.

You’re let in as soon as you let your presence be known, and you’re relieved to see that Gai is in a meeting with the Hokage. Gai immediately comes over to brush shoulders with you, and you take in his scent, reassured by it. Iruka nods when the Hokage asks if everything is okay, and he relaxes somewhat. You give your full report, and the Sandaime puffs on his pipe throughout it, looking worried.

“We haven’t had any attacks such as the one that you suggested, but the perimeter guards have been doubled, and I’ve put some sentries in the forest around Konoha as well as more in the watch towers. ANBU is alert as well, and every active member that can be on duty has a mask on tonight. If something is scheduled to happen, we’ll be ready.” The Hokage looks grim as he says this, but you simply accept it as necessary. “Kakashi, you said that you had the scroll with the bodies of your captive’s teammates?”

You hand the scroll over, and the Sandaime sighs as he takes it. “Thank you. I’m not sure when it would have been found that Iruka was missing if you hadn’t noticed.” There’s a glint in his eyes that you think might be approval. You shrug one shoulder and resist the urge to hunch lower. “If we’re attacked, we’ll be ready for it because of you.” He takes a puff on his pipe and leans back in his chair. “You have my thanks. You’ve performed extremely well, yet again.” You nod and accept the praise, even though you’re not really sure you deserve that much. “Gai, to your position, as we discussed. Kakashi, can you wait outside for a moment, and then escort Iruka to the hospital?”

You nod, and close the door after you, feeling soft barriers spring up to protect the room as soon as the door is closed. Gai grins at you then barrels down the hallway. Lynx is standing next to the door, and she nods at you with respect as you exit. You nod back and go to lean on the wall opposite the door, your fingers itching to pull out _Icha Icha_. However, you don’t think Iruka will be long, and you’re right. Four minutes after you started leaning, Iruka opens the door and starts walking down the hall, towards the door, and eventually, the hospital. You don’t ask what the Hokage wanted to talk about, and Iruka looks troubled, so you don’t start up any other conversation. You habitually ask for Juuna at the front desk, and the receptionist rolls her eyes as she picks up the phone to call your med nin in.

“What’s the damage this time? Didn’t I have you in here just a few days ago?” Juuna says, voice exasperated as she comes out of a doorway and looks you over. Iruka blinks as you respond.

“Maa, not me this time Juuna-san. Iruka-sensei here needs a check-up, though.”

Juuna looks vaguely surprised as she looks at Iruka, then nods. “Very well. Let’s find a room, shall we?” She leads you towards the room where she normally takes you. You hover outside as Iruka has his check-up, legs still buzzing from their extended chakra use. Juuna opens the door and Iruka comes out. You go to walk off, but Juuna catches your arm and drags you inside. “Nuh uh uh. You’re coming with me. I so very rarely get you in here, I’m going to take advantage of it.” You wave bemusedly at Iruka as Juuna closes the door behind you and goes through a quick check of everything vital. She tells you not to use any chakra for another few days, which you already knew, berates you for your chakra exhaustion, which you’re used to, and then ushers you out. To your surprise, Iruka is still standing there, watching the comings and goings of the hospital staff.

“Want to go get some food?” He asks, and you smile slowly as you nod.

Things get back to normal after that. Gai must have counted your impromptu outing as a mission, so he doesn’t bug you to show your ‘Collective Powers of Youth.’ You make sure that Iruka has new wards around his apartment, and you show him some high level ones that you used to use when you set up a safe house on a mission. You do boring, A and B Ranked missions and go out with the other jounin after they’re done. You build an inventory of names and abilities in your mind of people who you’ve gotten to know while doing these missions – do they crack under pressure or work even better because of it? How highly motivated are they to complete the mission and watch out for their teammates? Who are they really loyal to? Sometimes you think you can hear whispers at the edge of your hearing about Danzou, but by the time you’ve looked, there’s no one there. It infuriates you, but you keep your emotions to yourself, bottling up your rage at the advisor. All the things he did to you, and Tenzou and the village… those that you know about are horrifying enough, and you are probably only just skimming the surface. You try to act like you have forgotten all about him, but you do not think he has forgotten about you or Obito’s eye. People come for the Sharingan multiple times, and when you capture them, they all find some way to kill themselves before you can get any information out of them. You spend entire months on edge, waiting for attacks to come. Gai and Iruka ask you what’s wrong, but you deflect their questions with other things. Neither look happy to drop the subject, but you don’t want either of them knowing the things that you do. It could put them in danger.

The only person you discuss it with is Tenzou, and Miho, if she can find the time away from her missions. Both of them are squad leaders, but you know that they would both follow your orders if you asked them to do anything. Miho’s work load is especially intense; you suspect that she is being groomed to take over the post of the Director. Miho has been a squad leader for almost five years, which is above average. You shot those averages out of the water, but you still remember when you were twenty one and hurting and stupid, and you make sure that both of your former teammates are okay with their jobs and their lives. They have friends outside of ANBU, and you know that Tenzou is dating Owl, which you hope will last. She’s funny and flirty and they probably have fantastic sex. You can’t help being a little jealous though. You may have sort of maybe admitted to yourself that you could possibly have feelings for a certain chuunin, but it’s not like you’ve told anyone. Or have any idea how to act on them. At all.

You might have abandonment issues.

You tell yourself that you’re being very stupid and very childish as you move rice around your plate with your chopsticks while sitting at the bar in Iruka’s kitchen. Iruka hums around the space, and you don’t have the heart to tell him that while you deeply appreciate it, his cooking kinda sucks. You suppose that it’s because being a bachelor who lives alone, he probably doesn’t have many occasions to cook, if the many frozen meals in the freezer and worn take out menus sitting in a pile on the bench mean anything. You don’t really know how to proceed in your pursuit of _more_ with Iruka; you haven’t really done this. Ever. The closest thing you’ve have to actually dating someone was when you had that thing with Kurenai, but you don’t think that it could really be called dating. You just lived together sometimes and slept together if you felt like it. You still have a deep relationship with her, but it isn’t anything different from what you feel for Gai or Miho. And after that came the disguise of stripping away your protections and being something that you were not to get to your targets when they were most vulnerable; and that didn’t always happen before the sex. You’ve henged a few times to go and pick up other shinobi, and that’s not unusual either. Anonymous encounters really are that, in the ninja world. But being yourself? Being vulnerable with someone and _actually_ being vulnerable, not just acting as if you are? Yeah. You have no clue as to how to start even thinking about doing that.

Iruka smiles at you, and you wonder if he sees the moment you decide to learn how.

The pre-genin graduate to become actual genin, and you resign yourself to another go around at this ridiculous act. You doubt that these genin will pass either; you wonder if your restrictions are too tight. But then you think of your own team, and once again, you give your kids the bell test.

You fail them. You even told them this time that the test was about teamwork, and they still managed to fuck it up. You tell them that they are going back to the Academy, and you try not to feel a twinge of regret in your heart. This is how you have decided that things must be.

Iruka doesn’t ask about your kids or why you didn’t take them on that night when you seek him out. He can tell that something is off, though. He watches as you insist on making him food, slightly bemused at being kicked out of his own kitchen. You use the excuse of cooking to not talk too much, which you think Iruka might understand. His soft chatter fills the space that you leave, and it eases you. You’ve thanked him for the meal (which Iruka replied that _he_ should be thanking _you_ because you made it) and are standing at the door when Iruka speaks up.

“Kakashi.” You try not to shiver. This is a recent thing, not using the honorifics on each other’s names. So far it’s only in private, and only sometimes, but you are grateful for it. Perhaps you are doing something right in your attempt to let Iruka in. You turn to face him, eyebrow cocked. Iruka hesitates for a moment before continuing. “You know that you can come here, right? Whenever you need.”

You look at Iruka silently for a long time. Iruka is patient, like always when it comes to things like this. Like he’s scared of frightening you off if he moves too suddenly. “Yeah,” you finally say. “I know.”

You think that Iruka looks surprised, but you’ve already closed your door and have stepped out into the snow.

The next day you change your medical forms so that Iruka is listed as next of kin.

It doesn’t come up until you’re bleeding out in the hospital, bad intel leading to a fuck up on the executive level that sent you into a shitty situation. You’re pretty sure that if Genma hadn’t been on your team, all four of you would have died; as it is, only three Leaf nin made it back to Konoha. Things are very fuzzy, interjected with moments of perfect, kaleidoscopic vision when you blink open the Sharingan, but you manage to make out the guards in front of the village, and you just collapse, knowing that you can finally let go. You’re pretty sure that you’ve been holding in your intestines for that last twenty kilometres, and Genma had repurposed his bandana and senbon into a makeshift bandage when he’d run out of those in his med kit, and Hirito, your other teammate, looks dead from where Genma has him slung over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. You have Shiru’s corpse sealed in a scroll in your vest, and while most of the blood all over you is yours, there is some from the target as well. She died before things went to shit and six jounin burst out of nowhere. It took everything you had just to get away, and you let yourself rest, now that you can see the walls of Konoha. You hope that it’s not the last thing you see.

You wake up in a hospital. That’s not particularly unusual, but the way you can’t focus your eyes and the splitting pain in your side that feels like someone shoved a kunai into your stomach (oh wait, they did) isn’t as familiar. Neither is the person sitting by your bedside.

It takes you a long time to blink open your eye enough to finally focus, and then some more time before you can move your head and alert the person reading by your bedside that you are actually awake.

“Kakashi?” Iruka says, leaning forward. “Are you awake? Do you need me to call a medic?” You try to wave him off, but he does it anyway. A few med nin come in, and you don’t really recognise any of them but Juuna. She checks your temperature and you realise that you’re not wearing your mask or your gloves or _anything_ but the shitty hospital scrubs that you despise. You try to sink further into your blankets to hide away from the people who you do not know.

Iruka is hovering anxiously behind all the medics, and you put up with their fussing until one of them tries to mess with the IV line in your arm. “Unless you’re taking that out, leave it the fuck alone,” you growl, and are rewarded with all the medics but Juuna backing off. You glare at them as best you can with one eye and while wearing a shift with bunnies on it. It must work, because one of the medics pick up your chart and the other two leave the room. Iruka silently makes his way back to his seat while Juuna apologises and then lifts the blankets to start poking at your wound. There must be some type of painkiller in your drip, because you can hardly feel it.

“They managed to get you nicely,” Juuna says, and while her voice is clinical, you can see the worry in her eyes. “Through your intestines and nicking your uterus. We’ve got the sepsis under control, but I’m glad that you were in the Land of Hot Water and not anywhere further away than that. I don’t want to think about what could have happened if you hadn’t gotten here in time. Moving is probably going to be extremely painful, so I wouldn’t recommend that. There’s only so much that the painkillers can do. It’s probably going to take a few weeks until you can get around without fear of pulling anything and well, dying, but you’re going to have to be in here for at the very least a week. And I will be checking in on you, so don’t even think about leaving, if by chance my warning about the pain and death doesn’t deter you. Because I was serious about that. Don’t move.”

“How are the others?” You ask, and grimace at how dry your throat is. “And can I grab some water?”

Iruka gets up, likely to find some water for you, as Juuna starts speaking. “Genma-san will likely come out of it fine. He had a concussion, a nasty gash on his side and was dealing with some significant blood loss, but he’ll heal faster than you. Nothing too serious. Hirito-san is a different story. We had to put him in an artificial coma to try and get the swelling in his brain to come down. He lost a lot of blood as well, so now it’s just a waiting game. I believe that Genma-san already gave all the pertinent mission details, so you shouldn’t worry about that.” Iruka comes back with a cup of water, and Juuna snatches it off him to then tilt the glass to your lips, skilfully fending off your feeble attempts to take it from her. “You have Iruka-sensei here who’s nice enough to keep you company.” She smiles at him, and then continues, her voice more sombre. “Rest, Kakashi. I mean it. This isn’t an injury that you should take lightly. If you’d been another few hours…” She trails off, concern in her eyes. “Just take the time to heal. You need it.” With that, she exits the room, closing the door with a soft _tap_ behind her.

You sigh, and then try not to whimper as that moves everything that it shouldn’t. Iruka is looking at you, tapping his book against his knee. He gives you a watery smile when you meet his eyes. “You had me worried,” he tells you. “Had everyone worried,” he corrects himself. “Lot of people coming through here when you were sleeping. I started calling them the jounin squad.” You squirm, uncomfortable with people you might not be close to coming in here and seeing you without any of your normal layers. Iruka must see your discomfort, because he rushes to correct himself. “No, not like that! I mean, squad, as in four people. Gai-sensei, Asuma-san, Kurenai-san and, uh. Well, I think it might have been Jiraiya-sama.” Iruka whispers the last part, like he can’t believe he was in the same room as the Toad Sage. “I just looked up, and then there he was. Asked me a bunch of questions about you, then left. He’s the only one that hasn’t been back yet. But those are the only jounin that were allowed in, so don’t worry about,” he waved his hand vaguely, gesturing at all of Kakashi. “And, uh, some ANBU poked their heads in. I don’t know who they were.”

“Did you get their masks?”

“Um, the one that’s been back a few times was a cat, I think. And the other was a type of bird.” You nod once, and Iruka relaxes slightly. Tenzou and Miho checking up on you. It isn’t anything that hadn’t happened before, and once word got around that you are awake, they’d probably both rush over as soon as they could handle it.

You’re about to let your eye droop closed when Iruka speaks again. “You put my name as your next of kin.” His voice is quiet when he says it. “Do you know how worried I was when a med nin shows up out of the blue while I’m teaching and tells me that I’m next of kin for someone who might be dying in the hospital, and they want to know your last wishes?” Iruka’s hands clench into fists, but you don’t say anything. Let him get everything out, and then you’ll talk. “I was terrified. I didn’t know who they were talking about first, because you didn’t think that telling me something like that was something that I might need to know. Let alone any of your other information. I rush over here as fast as I can, they tell me you’re in surgery. I pace outside for seven hours before they bring you out. Then you sleep for five days, and the doctors keep telling me that there’s a possibility that you won’t wake up and that I should be prepared for the worst. Do you know how fucked up that is? Why do they tell people that? ‘Prepare for the worst.’ It’s literally the worst phrase on earth, and I hate it. And I kinda hate you, now that I know you’re alive and not going to die, for putting me through this and not even telling me!” Iruka sucks in a deep breath and falls silent.

“Sorry,” you say, quietly. Iruka blinks, and his head turns to you. “Sorry,” you repeat, because he needs to hear it. His pain and worry and fear are so very easy for you to read, and the worst part is, you know that it’s genuine. You really did hurt him when you put him down on that form and didn’t tell him. “You’re right. I should have told you. I was wrong not to.”

Iruka thumps back against the back of his chair audibly. “Of all…” he mutters to himself. “Of all the things,” he says, louder. “Of all the things that you could have apologised for, and you apologise for that. Really?”

“Well, I am sorry about that,” you tell him. Iruka looks at you with his forehead furrowed.

“Huh,” he says quietly after a few moments have passed. “Alright then. I’ll forgive you, as long as you don’t put me down on any other forms that I should probably know about without telling me. And that you admit that you have communication problems. We should work on that, you know.”

“Deal,” you say tiredly. “If you don’t mind, I think I’m going to go to sleep. I knew I shouldn’t have let them mess with my IV…”

Gai is in the room when you next wake up. Then Asuma and Kurenai, and finally you catch Tenzou and Miho while Iruka’s at work. The week long wait is among your most tedious, but at least Iruka very grudgingly brings you some books, including _Icha Icha_ for you to read while he’s with the kids, just so you stop harassing the medics just for something to do.

He must have seen your chart, or some clueless medic probably asked him about you, but you’re certain that he _knows_. He was there when Juuna listed your injuries, and he would have heard that, at the very least. Iruka isn’t stupid, but he hasn’t said anything yet, and you don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. He keeps coming by though, for a few hours each day after school to keep you company. You think that that’s a good sign; if he’d had a problem with you being you, you’re not sure that he would have kept coming back. But he doesn’t bring it up, and you brood over it, resigning yourself to an awkward conversation when you find the opportunity to talk about it.

You’re finally discharged, and you walk slowly as you leave, still resisting the urge to grimace when you move in a way that pulls something that hurts. Your ambling is more precise than usual, and you are sure that all of the jounin you pass can see how tightly controlled your actions are. The sun on your face does a lot more for your peace of mind than nearly anything else over the last two weeks. You don’t go anywhere in particular, but unsurprisingly, you find yourself at the Memorial. As usual, you spend the most time loitering before Obito, not saying anything, just reflecting. The warm morning is quiet, broken only by the soft sounds of the wind in the trees and birds calling to each other distantly. You register movement out of the corner of your eye, but when you turn your head slightly, you breathe out quietly. Iruka is slowly picking his way towards you, pausing in front of some graves, some of them for minutes at a time. Eventually he makes his way to your side, and you slide your eye over to him, waiting for him to say something.

“You’re out of hospital,” Iruka finally offers, when it’s clear that you aren’t going to start up a conversation. You grunt in reply, not bothering to answer something so obvious. “Your side still hurt?” You give him a look, to which he shrugs one shoulder. “You got painkillers, then?” You nod once, then flex your shaky chakra reserves.

“Can you summon my dogs for me? They’re probably worried.” Iruka startles.

“Can I even do that? I don’t have a contract with them.”

“As long as you have my blood and know the hand seals you can,” you tell him. You’re only lightly armed, and while that’s making you uneasy, you know that a genin could probably take you down right about now, regardless of how much weaponry you have on you. Iruka pulls out a kunai and reluctantly makes a small cut on the back of your arm. You run him through the seals, and after he goes through them, a puff of smoke appears around you both. You can feel the ninken before it’s cleared, and they snuff around your feet, smelling the blood in the air and your lingering weakness. Pakkun doesn’t even move to jump onto your shoulder, so you know they must think you’re really bad off. You turn from the Memorial and make your way out of the graveyard, towards one of the benches on the paths around the training areas. Your dogs follow at your heels, not as rambunctious as they usually are. You answer their questions while you walk slowly, carefully making sure you don’t pull anything by accident. You don’t want to end up in the hospital again for another month at the very least. The ninken satisfy their curiosity about you, then move on to pestering Iruka with questions. He answers them all in good faith, and even gives a few of them belly rubs when you manage to make it to the nearest bench and lower yourself gingerly down onto it.

Iruka sits down next to you, and the dogs pile themselves around you both, jumping all over Iruka but being careful not to jostle you even slightly. You close your eye and tilt your head back to soak up the light and the sounds of the day, your ninken and Iruka with them, birds and wind, the soft sounds of the village in the distance. For a time, it’s enough and more than enough. You almost forget about the deep pain in your side.

Eventually, all the dogs calm down, and either leave you to run around the forest around you, or to settle at your feet to nap. Pakkun puts his head in your lap, careful to not touch your stomach. You watch Urushi and Guruko mock fight over a particular branch that they both like, and try not to smile as Bull drips saliva over your feet from where he’s snoring quietly. Biscuit sprints after Uuhei, their unnatural speed revealing them to be ninja dogs. Akino is napping in the sun beside Iruka on the bench, and Shiba is a soft grey blur in the trees above you as she practises jumping from branch to branch. The peace of the scene makes you feel more at home than anything else.

When you look, Iruka is smiling softly, his hand resting on Akino’s back. He looks happy, and you don’t want to say anything, don’t want to break the peace of the moment, but that’s what you’re good at, isn’t it? Breaking things. You take a shaky breath, and Iruka looks at you, a touch of worry in his eyes. “Are you alright? One of the dogs didn’t bump you, did they?”

“No,” you say. “They didn’t.” You hesitate, and Iruka just raises an eyebrow. The words feel like ashes in your mouth, choking you before you can say them. You bite your lip until you taste blood, and in your lap, Pakkun twitches, likely smelling it. “At the hospital,” you manage. “Did. Did you…” You trail off, hating yourself for how you can’t seem to say the words. But you don’t know Iruka will react – you don’t know what you will do if he leaves you. You resist the urge to bite your lip again when you realise how close you’ve gotten to him.

“Kakashi.” It’s just your name, but you feel your eyes being dragged towards Iruka anyway. His eyes are serious, and you wonder if you’re imagining the touch of sadness. “Your normal medic… Nahashi-sensei, that’s her name. She told me about it, although I think she thought that I already knew.” You nod once, sharply, ignoring how it twists your stomach. Nahashi is Juuna’s family name. “I… was a bit confused, at first. I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. She explained everything to me, and I had ample time to think of questions to ask her while you were lying there in front of me, unconscious. I think that put things in perspective, actually. You might not wake up, so I couldn’t be angry with you for not telling me. I just had to look at you, and think –” He stops suddenly, and you have your eyes fixed on the ground in front of you, not looking at him. “Kakashi.” He doesn’t say anything else until you reluctantly drag your eye from the ground to rest on him again. He keeps the eye contact as he speaks. “Kakashi, it’s fine. Don’t be an idiot. It’s fine.” He looks at you with mild reproach. “It’s okay.” He tugs on his ponytail for a few seconds before sighing. “Don’t worry about it. Me. Whatever. Just don’t stress. You need to heal.” That quirks your lips slightly, but most of you is taken up with melting down into a puddle of relief. “I have to get to my shift in the Mission Room,” Iruka says, a few moments later. He sounds regretful. “Pakkun, make sure that he doesn’t do anything stupid.”

“Always,” Pakkun grumbles from your lap.

“Good,” Iruka says approvingly. He looks at you searchingly before leaning over and pressing his lips against your cloth covered ones for a sharp second. He stands up as you watch him, eye wide, and smiles at you as he starts off towards the village. You resist the urge to touch your lips, instead moving your hand to rub Pakkun’s ears.

“He’s a good kid,” Pakkun says softly. Akino huffs his agreement from the other end of the bench, and you smile slowly to yourself.

You aren’t sure what the two of you are – you hover, something more than friends, but tantalisingly close to something _new_. Your visits to the Academy get more frequent, and Gai catches on that something has changed between the two of you. When you confess in the quiet between you sparring bouts in one of the private practise fields, he grins so wide that you’re half sure you can see every one of his teeth. You’re almost surprised when he doesn’t come up with any ‘Power of Youth’ sayings, but he does hug you, hard. That’s almost a practise session in and of itself: How To Escape From Gai’s Embrace. You get back to training after that, but you see a kind of deep satisfaction in Gai’s eyes, and you aren’t quite sure what to do with it.

You are twenty six and there’s another layered dimension to your dealings with Iruka now. You both dance around what you want to say, unsure. You aren’t quite sure what Iruka feels for you – does he want to be with you? Does he understand what he’s getting into? How fucked up you are? How many issues you have? Are you misreading him? What did he mean by the kiss? You aren’t quite sure about anything, not anymore. Your missions start to be certainties in your world. At least they have plain objectives, written down in black and white.

Genin tests come around again, and you already have your eye on those who would pass this year. The last Uchiha, certainly. Ino-Shika-Chou, probably. A few various other Clan pre-genin and maybe one or two civilians. You find your eyes lingering on Naruto the longest. He hasn’t flowered, as such – you doubt that any place as institutionalised as the Academy is a good place for him to learn – but you can see discipline in his actions now. It doesn’t come near most of the others in his class, but at least he has _some_. The ANBU that shadow him constantly sometimes nod to you when you pass them, or they pass you. You wonder if they wonder why you’re there, before you brush it off. Even if they did, they wouldn’t tell anyone. Besides the rest of their team and their entire division. While they are meant to be super secret top notch spies, most ANBU are terrible gossips. You’d long ago chalked it up to the terrible wait times on sentry and protection details. Of course, that wasn’t a habit you’d let yourself get into… most of the time.

The exams come, and you find that you’re surprised (and more than a little unhappy) that Naruto doesn’t pass. You don’t let yourself follow the boy, not wanting his own misery to only make your own discomfort more acute. That means you’re very unprepared for when the Hokage calls all the jounin he can find on short notice to gather: Naruto has stolen the sacred scroll.

You watch from across the room as Iruka pales and then sprints out the door. You think about his innate ability to track and feel people’s chakra, and wonder if that means he’ll be able to find Naruto. You’re about to follow him when the Hokage calls you over and asks you to help organise the ANBU in forming a protective perimeter and guard. He isn’t sure if it actually was Naruto, or another ninja simply disguising himself as the village prankster. Most of the higher ranking operatives are out on the field or not available, so you look once more at the space that Iruka left behind before nodding and gathering the ANBU that are loitering around the corners of the room. They obey your quick, pointed instructions deftly, none of them daring to be slow about it. It might have been nearly three years since you’d last put your mask on, but there wasn’t anyone in ANBU who didn’t know who you were or what status you held, now or in the past.

It doesn’t matter in the end, anyway. Iruka finds Naruto, and then it’s time for a strange, warped reality where you’re the one who is sitting in the chair and Iruka is the one in the hospital bed. You investigate his IV and see the mild sedative there, which is probably why he’s asleep. Taking a Fuuma shiruken to the back isn’t something that you’d want, and you wince internally when you see the thick swath of bandages around Iruka’s torso. There’s no way that’s going to be pleasant when he wakes up, so you take out your book and try to distract yourself from the memories of the day: the emotions that are bubbling up in you when you see Iruka lying down with tubes in him in front of you, and the darker kind of hopelessness whenever you remember the almost soulless like actions of the ANBU as they silently obeyed your instructions. You’d almost been able to forget how that felt like, but now you felt that the image would more than likely find its way into your dreams in the near future. You’d almost been able to forget that life, but it had snuck up on you and jumped on you when you’d least expected it, and you were _very_ uncomfortable with how unprepared for that you were.

You make the not so startling realisation that you want nothing to do with ANBU, ever again.

You’re still there two days later when Iruka wakes up. His eyes are groggy and unfocused, and they slowly focus on you as he becomes more and more awake. He’s lying on his stomach; putting weight on the very large wound that was far too close to his spine for your liking was probably not a good idea.

“’kashi?” He mutters, sounding off. You stand up and poke your head out of the door, waving at one of the passing nurses. She nods and goes off to get Iruka’s doctor when you tell her that Iruka’s awake. You close the door quietly and go back to sit in the chair next to the bed as Iruka blinks and looks around the room.

“It’s not nice being the one in the chair for a change,” you tell him. “Let’s not repeat this again.”

Iruka manages to look _supremely_ unimpressed with you, even lying down and wearing one of the terrible hospital shifts. “Please tell me that you did not just say what I thought you just said,” he grumbles. You eye smile at him, which only makes him groan and use the hand that isn’t bound up in a swath of bandages to cover his face. “What happened while I was out?” He asks after a minute has passed. You shrug; nothing of any import had occurred, at least not to Iruka. Miho is currently in the ANBU wing of the hospital, and you had been splitting your time between the two of them. Several of the nurses had even had the audacity to remark that it was good to see you here and not be in a hospital bed yourself.

“I’ve been assigned a team,” you tell him. “The meeting with them is the day after tomorrow. I think you’ll be discharged by then, so maybe you’ll be able to come by and wish them all good luck.” You frown slightly, looking at the bandages you can see around his chest. “Although maybe being around excitable young ninja to be isn’t a great idea.” Iruka snorts, and then winces. You look up as a few doctors come through the door, and begin fussing over Iruka. You stand up and take a few steps back, letting them do their work. Iruka is in the normal wing of the hospital, so the view out of his window is vastly different to the one that you’re used to. Your normal room has a view of the village and the street leading into the hospital main entrance, so you could at least use that for your entertainment while you couldn’t move anywhere else. Iruka’s room looks out towards the outskirts of Konoha, and you can see the village wall and the forest outside it fairly clearly. The nurses bustle, taking notes, checking blood pressure and peering into Iruka’s eyes. One of them was poking at his back, which he obviously didn’t appreciate. When they’ve all left, Iruka shoos you outside – you go reluctantly, but he asks for you to come back around dinner time with some actual food, and you’re more than happy to oblige.

The Sandaime calls you up, the day you’re to be introduced to the new Team 7, to present to you your prospective team. You catch your breath when you see that Naruto is there – you want to take care of him in the way that Minato cared for you, all those years ago. Sasuke is no surprise. He’s the last Uchiha, and you are the only person with a working Sharingan that’s loyal to Konoha. Of course he’d be on your team. You don’t really know anything about Sakura besides what you’ve observed in the field of the Academy. A bit shy, but loud when she needs to be. One of the two civilians to pass the graduating test this year. The formation makes you shiver slightly: a young genius, a clever kunoichi, and the village prankster to be mentored by a potential Hokage candidate. When you look up from their files you see that the parallels aren’t lost on the Hokage either. He takes you to their homes, each one telling a different story. There is loneliness and isolation and sorrow in Naruto’s cramped apartment, so thick that you can almost taste it. The expired milk on the table leaves you with a bad feeling in your stomach, and you didn’t even drink it.

Sasuke lives by himself, alone in the Uchiha Compound. You wonder why – after your father died, the first thing you did was leave the place where it all happened. But Sasuke lives among his ghosts, the empty promenades and streets making the place seem larger and hollower than they probably are.

Sakura’s parents greet you when you turn up at her home, and provide you with a different prospective on the young ninja. Out of all of your team, she will probably be the one you can count on the look after herself the most, or at least you know that she lives with others that will look out for her. While you travel from place to place, the Sandaime goes over his rationale with you, explaining your team assignments and why he thought that it would be best to place them how they are. Then he went into the other teams he arranged, briefly. You nod your head along to all of them, and split off from him as he heads back to the Hokage Tower. You’re meant to have met your new team about an hour ago, but you have things to do, and so you stand in front of the Memorial for a time, telling Obito silently about your new team and what might come along with them. As his parting words, the Sandaime had told you in no uncertain terms that this team was one that needed to be passed; Naruto and Sasuke needed to be out, learning the ways of the ninja in order to use their abilities in the future to help the village. You resolve to give them a few chances and hints, but if they can’t work together as a team, you won’t pass them. It’s your choice, and you know that the Hokage agrees that your criteria is fair. If you show him that they are incapable of working together, he’ll probably allow you to send them back to the Academy.

Tenzou shows up briefly, and you talk about Miho (she told him that she’s been thinking of retiring for a while, and now seems like a good time) before he tells you that you’re changing, slowly but surely. You’re not quite sure what to make of that, so you brush it off and head towards the Academy, where you’re now over two hours late to meet your students. As you enter, you see the blackboard duster balanced in the door, but when you let it fall on your head, you only see Naruto’s pranks as a way for him to gain your attention. No teamwork. You set the meeting for tomorrow’s bell test, and then show up late – you went to visit Iruka, but he wasn’t in his apartment, as he’d been let out of the hospital the day before. You wander for a while, picking up some food, before heading towards training ground three. It was time to see if your new genin could make it in the real shinobi world, or if they were just fooling themselves.

You pass them. They were so close to failing, but then Sasuke broke your rules and fed Naruto, even though you know he doesn’t like him. The three of them light up when you tell them that they passed, and you even quirk a smile at them as they celebrate. You don’t think you’ll ever forget the look on Naruto’s face when you leave him tied to the pole. You didn’t use strong knots, so he should be able to get out of them easily enough. It’ll be a learning experience.

You head to the Mission Room and lean against one of the tables while you fill out the forms necessary to file your team as complete. You write Team 7 at the top of the form and read it over quickly to make sure you didn’t miss anything. It wouldn’t do to mess this paperwork up. You hand it in to a surprised chuunin, and saunter out of the room with your hands in your pockets. You’ve got a team to train, certainly, but first you need to know what exactly it is that they need to be trained in.

Sakura has her brains, her planning and strategy. Naruto has his pursuit and stealth and his boundless determination to succeed. Sasuke has his abilities, far above what a newly minted genin should have. He’s smart as well, but you think it’s a type of innate cleverness that means he can think of things on the fly, or understand new concepts quickly. It’s opposed to Sakura’s book learning and Naruto’s reliance on trial and error. The three of them all think differently, but that’s something to foster in a team, as long as they can all communicate openly and trust one another. You’re fairly sure that that’s going to take a while to build up, but if they manage to get there, you’re certain that this team is not one that you would want to mess with.

Of course, that’s probably what they said about your genin team as well.


	4. Sword

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gladio is Latin for _sword._

 

You dive headfirst into dealing with your genin. It’s disorientating, at first. You find that you have boundless energy, you’re more rested than you can remember, and that this is the longest you’ve ever remembered spending in the village at one time. All because you have a team now, and you’re completing daily D-Ranks, instead of risking your life in constant A and S-Ranked missions. The young ninja under your care take up the majority of your day, and sometimes more than that if you’re doing an overnight training session. Your free time becomes limited to the amount of time that you make them wait in the mornings (you wonder when they’ll realise that all of your ‘late’ arrivals are timed; two hours on days with a T in them, three hours on Mondays, an hour and a half on Wednesdays and Sundays, and three hours, twenty three minutes on Fridays) and the time after you dismiss them for the day, which can be anywhere between twelve and seven. You begin to realise why all the jounin-sensei always seem to gather together after a long day of dealing with twelve year olds – they’re the only ones who understand the pain you’re dealing with.

Well, them and Iruka. You’re being given all kinds of new perspectives on Iruka’s job, and you teach the in comparison _sane_ kids. He has to deal with the ones under ten. You’re fairly certain doing that on a regular basis would kill you sooner rather than later. With each new way that Naruto finds to prank Sasuke, you, or less regularly, Sakura, you grow more disillusioned with young people as a whole. (You say ‘pranks’ but you’re fairly sure they’d be considered conduct breaches if you ever got around to writing them up: Sasuke’s hair was only pink for a day, and all of the food in Sakura’s house was only spattered all over the walls once but you think that it’s something that you’re going to have to get him to give up, the sooner the better.)

The pranks and the general unease between your team ceases for a while after everything goes down in Wave. Sasuke’s near brush with death sobered your genin more than all the training you’d given them in Konoha. You foster the team spirit as much as you can while you’re all still in Wave, learning what works for them and what makes them argue. By the time you all leave, you’re fairly certain that you’ve got the relationships between them all down.

That all flies out the window when you get back to Konoha. Naruto and Sasuke are back at each other’s throats, and the animosity that Sakura held toward Naruto had returned in (mostly) full force. You try to lull them all back into a team with all the skills you’ve acquired over the twenty plus years you’ve been a shinobi, with limited success. The one who’s gone through the biggest improvement is undoubtedly Sasuke. It’s probably because he’s forced to interact with a few people on a daily basis, thus he’s become dependent on the team, even if he doesn’t want to be. It cheers you, and very, very slowly, things begin to thaw between your genin. It’s not anywhere near the team camaraderie that you want, and that you see developing between Asuma and Kurenai’s teams, but it’s something.

You spill your worries to Iruka over dinner one night, toying with the rice on your plate. You’re in Iruka’s apartment, and he listens seriously to what you’re saying before he sighs. “I think you’ll just need time, Kakashi,” he tells you, wincing slightly. “Naruto and Sasuke need time to find friendship as well as rivalry, and Sakura needs to acknowledge both Naruto and Sasuke as people instead of who she wants them to be. Naruto is probably the closest to being what you’re aiming for, but he still needs to rearrange his relationships with both of them before anything can happen. My advice? Shared suffering. I never felt closer to my teammates than when we were all in a muddy, cold ditch somewhere, while it was raining, for hours on end, waiting for something that never came.”

You take Iruka’s words to heart probably more than you should. You request a C-Rank (an _actual_ C-Rank, this time, you check. Three times.) and present it to your genin. They bounce with excitement (well, Naruto does; Sasuke and Sakura are more reserved, probably thinking over their last C-Rank) until they find themselves in the backwaters of the Fire Country, lying in a cave that you can’t crouch in, rolling around in things you don’t want to identify, waiting and recording the people who are coming in and out of a castle that you’re all watching. While it’s snowing. Your genin look like they’d all rather be literally anywhere else. Sakura’s lips are blue until you suggest to Sasuke that he could practise his chakra control by firing small katon blasts to warm them all up. Naruto is squirming from the boredom and you’re silently impressed with how he’s dealing with the forced stillness – it’s something that you know he struggles with, and you make a note to yourself to do something good for him when you get back to Konoha. Sasuke has his eyes fixed on the castle, but you can see that the long hours of nothing are putting his patience to the test. You have to go down to record each visitor, and you take one of your genin each time, letting the other two grouch and growl to one another while the one you have with you gets a chance to stretch their legs.

You take Naruto first, and the silent expedition to get close enough to record the visitor’s identity turns into an extended lesson on how to move quietly and avoid detection in the snow and in a forest. You and Naruto come back to the cave almost two hours after you left it, for what should have been a twenty minute trip. Naruto looks satisfied with himself, and it takes a full hour for him to start shifting again.

The next time you need to leave, you take Sakura. She ghosts after you better than Naruto, but after you find the identity of the traveller, you loop back and show her how visible her footsteps are. That leads into a lesson on snow stepping, and the delicate chakra control needed to step over snow without leaving a trace. It only takes her half an hour to pick it up, and as long as you’re walking and not running, she can keep it up, an expression of intense concentration on her face. Naruto and Sasuke are pressed against each other when you come back, and you try not to smile at them.

Sasuke comes with you the third time you have to go out, and you show him how you can use katon to your advantage here, how melting some ice in your target’s path distracts them enough so you can obtain a positive ID and be away before their target even realises that there was another human within a hundred metres of them. You show Sasuke how to organise the tight squares you keep in your vest pocket, how to record information on them and how to key them to your chakra so only you can see the information hidden on them. Then, a strategic lesson in how to use snow falling from trees to your advantage, both in reconnaissance and battle. Sasuke looks pleased by the end of it, but you see dread enter his eyes when you come into range of the cave. Naruto and Sakura look like they’re about to freeze their asses off, but before you can say anything, Sasuke warms all four of you up with a few well-placed katon blasts. You do smile at that.

By the end of the five days, your genin hate anything that looks like snow, and are more of a team than they’d ever been before. So of course you nominate them for the chuunin exams. They’re probably not ready to pass, but they are ready to try. It’s especially a reward for Sasuke, who’s made the most progress of all of them. Of course, Iruka gets all put out about it when you nominate them – you try to tell him that he’s wrong, but you shut him down when he doesn’t stop. You find him later that night, although he ignores your knock at first. You sigh and consider talking through the door, but you don’t think Iruka would appreciate that. You know that he’s able to feel you outside, so you decide to just wait. He won’t be able to leave you outside for long, even if he is angry with you. You turn over your phrases in your head as you wait, keeping your eye on the clouds overhead. You don’t think that Iruka would leave you outside if it starts snowing…

It starts snowing. Iruka still doesn’t open the door. You knock again, trying to put some forlornness into the sound. You can almost hear his sigh from the other side as he walks over. He opens it, but he doesn’t look pleased with you. “Kakashi-san,” Iruka greets, voice as icy as the snow falling outside. You wince at the formality. “Is there a reason you’re standing out here, or don’t you have any genin to terrorise?”

“Iruka,” you start, but Iruka turns away, heading back inside. He leaves the door open though, so you take that as a sign that you can come in. You do so hesitantly, feeling for the first time like you aren’t welcome in Iruka’s apartment. It’s not a feeling that you’d like to replicate. Iruka sits down at his kitchen bar and stares at you silently, obviously waiting for you to say why you came here. You take a breath and tell him your reasons. Your genin might not be ready to be chuunin, but they are ready to try. To taste what it might be like. To be shown, in the safe environment of Konoha (or at least as safe as any chuunin exams can be), how the exams work and operate. You think they’re ready to make the decision as to whether or not to take the test. Iruka listens with a stony face as you talk, and when you fall silent he sighs.

“Maybe I’m just too biased,” he says, biting his lip. “But I don’t know if I agree with you entirely. I don’t know if I _can_ agree with you entirely.”

“This is the safest way they can learn,” you tell him, trying to make him understand. “I wouldn’t put them through this if I didn’t think that they couldn’t do it.” Iruka drops his eyes and stares at his kitchen bench and doesn’t say anything in response. You shift your weight slightly, resisting the urge to sigh. “Iruka. They’ll get through it.”

He combs a hand through his hair, making it messier than it already is. “I suppose I’ll just have to trust you,” he grumbles. “Not that I have much of a choice.”

You accept Iruka’s hesitance as his due. Your kids _are_ very young for it, but the experience they’ll get by entering this year would be extremely useful for them in the future. D-Rank missions were all well and good, but you know that things often go to shit more often than not when the fucked up world of shinobi comes into play. You arrange for Iruka to give Team 7 their welcome speech when they arrive at the Tower during the second task, but otherwise pace uneasily as you wait for the results to come in. As confident as you want to appear, you know more than most how things can go sideways on even the most innocent of missions.

Sasuke comes back with a seal on his shoulder, and you feel a twinge of dread. You seal it as best you can with the limited materials you have on hand, but you would have preferred to consult with Iruka before you did so. You know enough about seals to get by, but his expertise could have been useful. You hadn’t even dared to try and find him, though – you could see how the seal was affecting Sasuke, and you didn’t want him unguarded for a second longer than he had to be. You fret over it, but when Iruka checks it later, after you’ve all fought and bled for their success, he reluctantly tells you both that changing it now would only make it worse.

Your month of training only seems laughable when you send your genin off to fight against a rouge jinchuuriki. The taste of blood in your mouth is fouler than normal as you face off against what seems like an unending supply of Suna ninja, with Sound there to back them up. The only thing that’s keeping you from sprinting off towards your kids is the people you can still see under the genjutsu here, and the knowledge that they would all be butchered if you left. Gai fights beside you, a green blur, taking down ninja faster than you can count them. It doesn’t seem like enough.

It isn’t enough. You don’t sleep that night, the enormity of the events that had happened during the day dragging at you, making it impossible for you to even consider resting. You sit on one of the spikes of Minato’s hair, looking out over the lower half of the village. The growing light of the sun shows the damage done, by friend and foe alike. You’re just glad that Jiraiya was here to guard against the giant snakes you heard reports of by the West Gate. Whole sections of wall are demolished, and you know that if you took your hitai-ate off, you wouldn’t be able to see the normal barrier shimmering above your head. It had been broken, and while recovery teams are working on setting the new one up as soon as possible, something as complicated as the barrier that protected the village wasn’t something you could put up overnight.

Iruka is trying to distract himself from the loss of the Sandaime by leading the project, his intimate knowledge of barriers and seals lining up perfectly with his ability to ‘see’ chakra. Right now, eight of the twelve ANBU teams currently in Konoha are patrolling where the barrier normally protected their lands. Jounin are manning the walls and gates, taking the jobs that normally chuunin were barely needed for.

ANBU had deferred to you for a brief hour and a half yesterday until orders from the Director came through, orders that had echoed yours. Shikaku had publically taken leadership of the ninja ranks as his job as Jounin Commander. While everyone was still shocked and confused from the suddenness of Suna betraying the Leaf, there are already whispers about who will take the position of Godaime. Thanks to Jiraiya being here, and because he had so very publically defended the West Gate yesterday, most of the talk had been diverted from you to him. You’re very glad. You know that you’re not ready to take on such a role. You’re two years older than Minato when he died, but it doesn’t seem like it. You think that, to you at least, he will always remain older and far, far wiser than you ever will be.

You spend the two days before the Sandaime’s funeral rebuilding the village. You see Tenzou’s handiwork in most of the new wood buildings in the areas that were demolished by the absent sweep of a giant frog’s foot. The hard work is good – you can see that the kids are satisfied by the physical proof of their work, of the proof that they’re helping their village. They spend a lot of time at your apartment. The dogs are delighted to take advantage of the walking belly rub machines, and you think that they’re good therapy for your genin. The loss of the Hokage hangs over the heads of everyone, but no one mentions it. You think that they all taste the same ash of grief that you do when you think of him; the Sandaime is dead. It still doesn’t feel real.

You only see Iruka during the Third’s funeral. The barrier around Konoha had been restored that morning, and that settles everyone a little. You corner Lion after the funeral, who’s Captain of Iota Squad, for more details. You knew him when he was green in ANBU, and since most of the Corps still see you as the likely Godaime, it doesn’t take much to get him to tell you about Iruka. Iota specialises in offensive and sensory jutsu, so it made sense that they were put on Barrier Detail the majority of the time. Lion tells you of Iruka’s single minded determination, how he hadn’t slept until the barrier was up again after the Invasion. He was why the barrier got put up again so quickly. You thank him, and withdraw, quietly disturbed. You didn’t need much proof to know that Iruka wouldn’t be holding up great, but this just solidifies what you guessed.

You’re completely unsurprised when Jiraiya turns the position of Hokage down, and you just feel a kind of bleakness when they come after you next. You extract yourself from the conversation by jumping out a window, and find the sage by the side of a river. He’s meditating, but opens his eyes when you settle down next to him. He grimaces when you tell him that you’re the likely candidate, and then tells you that he might have an alternate.

While you don’t want to become Hokage, you’re even more doubtful about the person Jiraiya suggests. Everyone knows that Tsunade abandoned the shinobi life years and years ago. Jiraiya sees your scepticism, and shrugs. “Hey, even if she turns us down, it’ll give you some more time to either be free of the responsibility, or to find someone else.” You raise an eyebrow, but accept his answer.

Jiraiya arranges to go with Naruto while you are left with the responsibilities of two young ninja who only have you to cling to in the unstable state that Konoha has become. Shikaku is ruling through martial law, but you know that he’s best put in a position where he can use his tactical capabilities, and that isn’t behind a desk. Sakura has her parents, but they are civilians, and don’t quite understand what’s happening. She has Ino and her parents for support, but they aren’t there in the way that you are. Sasuke has even less people to rely upon. The small family that you had worked so hard to create is his only recourse now.

The night of the Sandaime’s funeral, you go to Iruka’s apartment, uneasy when you realise that Iruka’s door isn’t locked and the wards aren’t armed. You step inside lightly, senses alert. You barely hear the muffled, “Kakashi,” come from Iruka’s bedroom.

Panicked, you send out a wave of chakra, but can’t sense anyone else in the apartment. You might be bad at feeling chakra, but even you’d be able to tell if anyone else is here. You can only feel Iruka’s chakra signature. You chastise yourself for the sudden rush of emotion, and swiftly toe off your sandals while you lock the door. You can’t do anything about the wards, so you draw a swift, basic seal over the door, using just your chakra. It won’t last for more than half an hour, but it’ll alert you if the door opens and it’s broken before then.

You step towards Iruka’s bedroom, ghosting silently over the floorboards. When you nudge open Iruka’s door, you’re not surprised to see him curled up under his blankets, his back to you. You sit on the floor beside his bed. Neither of you say anything for a long time. You try to think of something that will get a positive response – nothing about the rebuilding, that’ll just remind him of why it needs to be rebuilt. Not about the Mission Room, otherwise he’d just beat himself up for not being there to organise everyone. Nothing about Naruto, taken away from his guidance on a potentially dangerous mission. You finally settle on the barrier, knowing that you had to get him talking somehow.

“There’s been no problem with the barrier. The Barrier Team tells me that everything’s going well, and they appreciate the new formula that you created for them.”

There isn’t an answer for a long few minutes. Just as you’re about to say something else, Iruka responds, his voice rough.

“Well. That’s one thing that came out alright.”

You take that as permission to turn around. Iruka is still facing away from you, and you resist the urge to sigh. You get to your feet and sit on the side of his bed, keeping your eye turned towards him. Iruka turns over to face you, and presses his face against your leg. You hesitate before setting a hand on the back of his neck, stroking the skin there softly. “You can’t just… stop,” you say, voice sounding more unsure than you’d like. “Life goes on, irrespective of death. You may not believe me now, but you’re still going to wake up tomorrow, and you’re going to go on.” In a softer voice, you add, “Sandaime wouldn’t have wanted you to collapse like this.”

“It doesn’t feel like it,” Iruka whispers from where he’s curled himself around you. It’s odd seeing him with his hair down. “It doesn’t feel like it’ll pass.”

Your heart bleeds for him. You know that the Hokage was the person who picked Iruka up after his parents died in the Kyuubi attack, you know how much they meant to each other. And you know how much Iruka means to you. You aren’t going to let him destroy himself over this, not when it isn’t something he can change, or could have prevented in the first place.

“Come on,” you say gently. “You’ll feel better after you have a shower and some food.” Iruka doesn’t move at first, until you stand and pick him up as smoothly as you can. Iruka struggles out of your grasp weakly, and then just stands with his head on your shoulder. You sling an arm around him and push him into his bathroom. You hover until Iruka goes to pull his loose shirt over his head, then you head towards the kitchen. The sound of the shower starts, and you sigh to yourself in relief. There’s barely anything in Iruka’s cupboards or fridge, but you manage with what you have. The seal on the door has faded, so you put a new one on, tracing the kanji with your finger across the doorframe. The sound of the shower stops, and you cover the two bowls with other plates in an attempt to keep the food warm.

Iruka comes out a few minutes later, in fresh clothes and his hair wet. There are deep bags under his eyes and you thank whatever’s out there that you decided to come and check on him. He sits down at his kitchen bar and you push a bowl towards him, chopsticks already beside it. Iruka regards them balefully, but picks up the chopsticks after a few moments. You watch him eat slowly before pulling your mask down and keeping your eye on him while you eat.

You clean away everything once you’re both done. Iruka is pale, and he doesn’t have the normal vibrant air about him that you’ve come to take for granted. You aren’t quite sure what to do about it. Most jounin that you spend time with seclude themselves when they break down, with a close friend or lover to help them through it. With a jolt, you realise that _you_ are the one who’s in the position of helping Iruka. If only you’d gone to Kurenai for pointers before you’d come over…

You sit down in the chair next to him and resist the urge to tap your fingers on the bench. Iruka rubs a hand over his face, and when you look over, you aren’t surprised to see tear tracks. You stand up and pull Iruka to his feet, then go to curl up with him on his couch. Normally you’d choose the bed for this sort of thing, but you’re certain that being in there would only make things worse for him. Reassurance through touch is one of the most basic ways you can help. Iruka would think over the things you’d said, and he’d act on them. He was far better than you, in that respect. Iruka settles gratefully close to you, and you sling an arm over him when you’re both lying down. You watch the door as he falls asleep, and when you’re certain that he isn’t going to wake up if you move, you go through the house silently. You gather up all the things you can wash from his room, and open the window to let some fresh air through. You put new sheets on his bed and try to clean up everything you can’t wash. By the time you’re done and you settle down next to Iruka again, the apartment doesn’t feel like death hangs in every corner.

Your missions and the daily briefings you’re now included in are given to you by Shikaku via an ANBU you don’t know (and oh, how that worries you, that you don’t know them). Koharu, Homura and Shikaku take up most of your time, as you and Shikaku vie against them in the decisions that you want to make.

Then, Itachi. Seeing him burns something within you; he’s grown up. He must be, what, seventeen now? He’s still so young, but stress has aged him. You fight, and you’re dragged into his Mangekyou far too easily for your liking; then, it’s only pain, and pain, and darkness and stillness.

You wake up in the hospital. It’s an experience that you’ve had far too many times over your life, and it doesn’t bother you as much as it used to. You struggle to remember how you got here; you don’t feel injured, but your head feels strangely achy, almost as if you’re recovering from a concussion. Juuna comes in after an hour, and then buzzes around you, berating you for not calling her earlier. She gives you a quick run down on everything that’s happened since you were out; Itachi and Kisame had escaped, Sasuke had gone after Itachi, and had gotten himself into the exact same predicament that you had been in. Naruto and Jiraiya had come back with Tsunade, and she had agreed to become the next Hokage. She’d also been the one to heal you. It’s been a month. You flex your fingers, and quietly worry about Iruka.

As for Tsunade becoming Hokage… You don’t know what to feel when you realise that you thought it wouldn’t actually happen, and that some part of you was expecting to be the next Hokage. It’s disorientating.

You’re called to the Tower on the first day that Tsunade is officially instated, three days after she arrives and the same day you’re released from hospital. You loiter outside, nodding to Lynx and Lion as they stand guard outside the Hokage’s office. It’s a familiar sight to you, even if you know that the person on the other side of the door isn’t who you’re expecting.

Shikaku comes out, and nods for you to go in. The ANBU let you pass, and you find yourself face to face with Konoha’s new guardian.

“Tsunade-sama,” you acknowledge, bowing your head slightly. “I’m glad you’ve accepted the position. Konoha needs a strong leader at this time.” You wonder if you mean your words as a slight barb; she abandoned the village for years. Will she be strong? Tsunade’s eyes flicker, and you know that she caught the undertone of your words.

“They tell me that you almost saved me coming back here and getting this job,” she says, her nails clicking on the hardwood of the Sanda… her… desk. You are still very rattled by the idea of someone else behind there, who doesn’t smoke or wear the Hokage’s robes, or nod gravely when you report a mission as successful. This will take some getting used to, you think. The Sandaime was _your_ Hokage. Even when Minato was alive, he was still there in the background. You know that Minato often went to consult with him before making large decisions.

The Godaime leans forward, running her eyes over you, assessing. You don’t react, taking her in even as she looks at you. Her henge is perfect; if you didn’t know that she was over fifty, you would be fooled by it. When you concentrate, you can feel the low buzz of chakra over her skin that is a tell for her jutsu; it’s a reason why you don’t use a henge everyday like she does. It would only invite more questions than it would answer. At least everyone knows why the new Hokage dons a younger version of herself. Vanity is easy to explain.

“Hatake Kakashi,” she says, enunciating each syllable of your name individually. “I’ve got the feeling that we’re going to be working together closely from now on. I only knew your father, not you, so we’re starting out on pretty even ground.”

You do not react to the mention of your father, keeping your slight slouch in the way that you had perfected many years ago. Starting off by talking about your father is not how you would define ‘even ground’ but you do not correct her. You are still evaluating this woman. Jiraiya said that she would be better than him as a candidate for Hokage, but you think that he would have put one of the Academy students in the seat if it meant that he could avoid doing so himself. Tsunade flicks a page by her elbow, and you can’t stop your minute flinch when you realise that it is your file. She raises an eyebrow daintily for half a second as she browses through your life, your missions, your information. You bite your lip until you taste blood, and the pain centres you slightly. You will not lose to this woman in your first meeting with her. If you cannot win, you will at least come out even. The stack of paper is small, so she must have just taken the top few folders of it, since you know that your entire file takes up a cabinet all by itself.

“This says that you were in ANBU, Black Ops Division. For a long time, too. You could have taken the Director’s seat, if you’d wanted it.”

“There are people who are better suited to that job than me,” you tell her. It’s true. You cannot fathom the enormity of the guilt you would have felt if you had been the one to be assigning missions that you knew your squads would not come back from. You are not ruthless enough with the lives of your comrades for that; you look at the fine details of the grand painting that makes up Konoha, counting the blades of grass that are the individual lives. You hope that Tsunade will be able to look at the entirety of the picture and do what is best for everyone while you take care of those around you.

“Hmm. Would you ever consider re-joining?”

You feel a spike of dread. “When I left, I was pretty much too old to be doing the solos that I had been going on, and Sandaime-sama thought that it would be good for me to pass on my skills to the next generation. That’s why I became a jounin-sensei.” You don’t mention your self-destructive behaviour. You probably don’t need to; Tsunade probably knows that that’s a common reason for members of ANBU being dismissed.

Tsunade nods, but a faint frown creases her forehead. “Too old for your missions? If we have an age limit on our assassination missions, I’m pretty sure you haven’t reached it yet.”

“Assassination wasn’t what I was talking about,” you say, and your voice is clipped, cold. “If you need someone killed, you have my services. I will not, however, be re-joining ANBU at any time in the future.”

Tsunade is silent before she moves on to the next thing that she wants to talk about, but you can almost see the moment she decides to have a closer look at your file.

You get a scroll for a solo in Wave almost as soon as you get back to your apartment, and you take it with a heavy heart. You go to tell your team that you won’t be around for a few days, only to find Sasuke and Naruto at each other’s throats, flying at each other, rasengan and chidori activated. You ask Jiraiya to talk to Naruto, and reassure Sakura before you follow the tracks that Sasuke left, his scent fresh enough for you to trail him easily. You find him, and lecture Sasuke about his behaviour before you go, but you leave dissatisfied. He’s not listening.

Later, you wonder if you’d just taken him back to your apartment and really, actually, talked to him, if things might have turned out differently. If you’d just been a little better at sensing the malevolent chakra that lurked just beyond the tree line. If you’d just been _better_.

You come back in time to find Naruto alone, unconscious in the rain. There is a scratched out hitai-ate on the ground next to him, and you don’t need Pakkun’s nose to tell you that it is Sasuke’s. You close your eye and try not to scream – you fucked this up as well. You had the chance, and you failed. Sasuke is in the wind, and Pakkun told you about the trail of bodies that you directed other ninja to, your other dogs leading them to Naruto’s fallen teammates.

A kind of tired stubbornness rises within you, and you recognise it as an echo of Iruka’s – it’s what he uses when the kids have worn him down just a bit too much. You motion for Pakkun to go after Sasuke, and he winces before turning to. The rain has probably washed away all scent, but Pakkun is hardier than most would expect, and his tracking skills have never been in question. You pick your sensei’s son up, and you try to crush your emotions like you’ve been taught, like you’re supposed to be able to do. It doesn’t really work, and you walk back towards Konoha with the rain hiding your tears. You’re tired and more than tired by the time that Naruto wakes up, and you have no answers for him. None that he would accept, at any rate.

You are twenty seven, and for the first time in your life, you feel _old_.

You’re in the Konoha hospital when you hear Pakkun’s familiar rasp coming from down the hall. You don’t open your eye from where you’re leaning your head back against the hospital wall, not wanting to confirm that Sasuke is gone. Pakkun comes closer, and with him are a few nurses, and a squeaking that denotes a moveable hospital bed.

You slowly open your eye in time to find Sasuke being wheeled past you, unconscious and still. Pakkun jumps onto your lap and tells you that he found him a few hundred metres away, collapsed from the battle that he and Naruto had gone through. Pakkun had found another ninja who had been on the trail, and they had brought him back. He still hasn’t regained consciousness.

It’s enough to rouse you from the stupor you had been in. Sasuke fucked up, but he was still _here_ , so perhaps there was a possibility for things to get better. You tuck worries of the future, of Orochimaru, and Sasuke’s wish to find Itachi into the back of your mind and focus on the present.

The seal that you put over the curse seal is, unsurprisingly, gone. You tell the medics not to touch him, and vault out the window. You’re fairly sure that Iruka has been out on missions like everyone else, and since he wasn’t in the hospital fretting over Naruto he’s probably still out of the village. However, you remember asking about a seal he was drawing, and him saying that he was trying to figure out a way to properly seal the mark on Sasuke’s neck. You know where Iruka keeps his seals, and hopefully you can find the draft that he had for Sasuke. If you could seal it more completely this time…

You’re just digging his key out of his back pocket when Iruka’s door opens, the owner of the apartment looking very tired and filthy.

“Kakashi?” Iruka says, surprised. “What’s wrong?”

“Sasuke,” you say, glad that you won’t have to root around to find the seal. “It’s complicated, and messy, but I need the seal you were designing for him.” Iruka has obviously just got back from a mission, and doesn’t have any idea about what happened to any of the genin. Iruka blinks a few times but goes over to his filing cabinet, where he unlocks it and starts rummaging around.

“What happened?”

You give him a quick rundown, until his hands stop and he’s staring at you, alarmed. You finish your quick story with the assurance that Naruto is in hospital and that he’s being given the best of care, and that Sasuke is unconscious, and the seal you put on him has failed.

Iruka pulls a few drawings out and stares at them. He goes over to his desk and starts drawing on a fresh sheet of paper, using the others he has laid out as references. “I didn’t come up with a complete solution before,” he admits. “But that was because I was trying to keep the seal free of the rest of his chakra. If I seal more of his chakra away with the seal, then it won’t be as hard to find a stable solution.”

“Do it,” you say. It’ll be far easier to keep Sasuke in check if he’s going to have trouble leaving again. Iruka gets up a few times to use references to other seals in his design, some you recognise, some you don’t. You try don’t want to distract him, so you pace around his living room silently instead, wondering what will happen. Sasuke attempted to betray the village, which would normally result in a death sentence. However, he is the last remaining Uchiha that the village has, and the Sharingan has always been one of Konoha’s greatest assets. You can already feel the argument that the elders will use. You already have a headache, but this just makes you heavy with dread. You have to stare at Iruka’s carpet to try and resist the urge to dip into memories of a much younger you, standing before the Council, inexperienced and scared and blissfully unaware of what they wanted from you.

You don’t want Sasuke to die. But he there have to be repercussions for his actions. You brood and stalk and think, turning over possible solutions and what recourses you have. You aren’t sure you come up with any that you are entirely happy with, but by the time Iruka stands up, brandishing a piece of paper, you think you might have some wriggle room in what you’ll present to Tsunade and the elders.

You escort Iruka to the hospital, where he goes over the seal, muttering to himself. You’re sure that it will function, but Iruka only spent two hours on it. Since he’d already been thinking about it before, that’s probably all he needed, but you know that he likes to spend more time on projects that are going to be used immediately. In the hospital, you check in with Juuna, who is fourth in command of the hospital as a whole, but who is currently in charge of the trauma patients brought in while Tsunade, Shizune and Ariko are in surgery trying to save Neji’s life. She tells you that Sasuke hasn’t woken up, and that two ANBU had appeared to watch over him silently. You nod and continue on to where she points.

Griffon and Tiger are the ones stationed in Sasuke’s room, which gives you the opportunity to put one of your plans for Sasuke into action. You know that Griffon lost a team member recently, who probably hasn’t been replaced yet. Her team is perfect for the idea you have for Sasuke, and you know that Griffon is close to Miho – a possible connection you could exploit. 

You make sure that Iruka has everything that he needs, gently moving Sasuke the ground and wheeling his bed to the side, moving the furniture outside so that he can inscribe kanji onto the ground around him. The ANBU stand in the corners, silent, and when you’re sure that Iruka has everything he need, you sidle up to Griffon. She’s the Captain of Rho squad, and you know more than enough about her to know that she won’t take any shit from Sasuke. You murmur your proposition to her quietly. When you’re done, she heaves out a sigh and looks at you.

“If you were anyone else I’d say to go find someone else to load your problems on,” she mutters. “But I _am_ down a team member…” She looks to Sasuke; Iruka is still writing kanji around him. “Look. If Tsunade agrees, then there isn’t anything I can do about it anyway. But you’re right – it’s probably a good plan for him. I won’t argue if they decide to assign him to me.” Asahina sounds aggravated, but you know that she’ll look after Sasuke. You nod your thanks, but she just rolls her eyes. “Just treat me and Miho to a night out and we’ll call it even.”

You have a feeling that ‘a night out’ will severely drain your bank account, but you nod anyway. It’s a small enough price to pay if Asahina will accept Sasuke onto Rho.

You stay in the room for the entire time Iruka draws his seal, careful not to blot out any of his perfectly sculpted kanji. When it’s finally complete, you watch as Iruka activates the seal and the kanji wriggle and squirm and bind the seal into dormancy on Sasuke’s neck.

You can’t say that you’re not relieved.

Iruka almost runs out of the room after he’s checked that everything went smoothly, and you nod to Griffon before following him to Naruto’s room. You hover in the doorway as Iruka sits in the chair beside him, worry clear on his face. You drink in the sight for a few more seconds before leaving. You have things to arrange.

It’s another few hours before Tsunade comes out of surgery, and by that time you’ve talked to everyone who needs talking to and paid everyone who needed paying. Tsunade doesn’t seem surprised to find you in her office, walking in and flopping down at her desk and resting her forehead down on it. She’s almost hidden by the amount of paperwork that has accumulated around the desk that she hasn’t gotten around to completing. You know that it’s only a matter of time before the elders get here, so you brief Tsunade on your idea quickly, running through the pros and cons.

She sighs. “You want me to put Sasuke in ANBU after what he’s done. I’m not seeing how this is a good idea.”

“It allows him to stay alive, which is my main goal,” you say. “But it also means that he’ll be under almost 24/7 surveillance without having to assign any ops just to watch him. Obviously you don’t send him on any high risk missions outside of the village. It also means that if he screws up again, ANBU will be there to capture him and kill him if necessary. But it will also allow the village to use his skills, and hopefully one day he can be trusted enough to return to the regular forces.”

“So you want him an ANBU, but not actually as an ANBU.” Tsunade sighs again. Her head hasn’t left her desk. “It’s never easy things with you, is it?”

You wisely don’t answer that one, letting her run over the idea for herself. The elders bustle in loudly exclaiming over the situation. Koharu scowls at you, which you don’t respond to. They’re not happy that you got to talk to Tsunade first and give her your ideas without them there to moderate them.

First comes the suggestion of killing, then banishing, which you have to try and not roll your eyes at. Then there’s stripping him of his rank, his ninja status, keeping him in a gaol cell for the rest of his life, chakra-burning him, waiting until he had a child to kill him, or just facilitating that now, to which you need to use all of your self-control to not snarl at them. Making sure he stays out of Konoha’s future and all of the other ninja so that rumour of the attempted desertion doesn’t spread to other hidden villages. You withstand it all stalwartly, slightly pleased to see that Tsunade seems to be taking their suggestions as well are you are.

When they’ve finally run dry, Tsunade sits still, her head balanced on her hands. “I’ve got another idea,” she tells them, and the tightness around your chest eases slightly.

Of course, it isn’t that simple. You’re with Sasuke when he wakes up. Iruka had planned to adjust the seal over his shoulder to allow a bit more chakra to flow, since Tsunade said that lack of chakra was probably the reason he was taking so long to wake up. Iruka fields his questions while you lurk in the background, but you don’t need to talk to Sasuke to see how much he hates you right now.

Tsunade takes Sasuke off your hands, and you know that he disappeared from the hospital without formally checking out. Juuna told you when you were there to see Naruto leave. She looks worried, but you tell her not to think about it too much.

You find Miho and ask for updates. She tells you that she and Asahina haven’t forgotten the night out you owe them. You wince slightly and promise again that you’ll pay up. Miho sighs dramatically but then tells you about Sasuke – he’s started his basic training, he doesn’t trust anyone, everyone’s been briefed on his situation. She tells you she begrudges the way that you can manage to make everyone on edge even when you’re out, which you just smile at. She leaves you be after you make her promise to keep an ear out for any news concerning Sasuke – she leads Omega squad, after all, so she can’t know everything. Besides Asahina, you know that Bear will be on Sasuke’s squad – someone you worked with a few times in the last year that you were in ANBU. You know that she’s solid. It’ll be a good team for Sasuke, if he can manage to get his head out of his ass.

Naruto doesn’t take it well. You tell Sakura, quietly, and she seems unusually silent in the days afterwards. You know that she is having a hard time coming to terms with who Sasuke is now. Naruto is far, far louder. After you tell him, you know that it will be almost impossible to keep news of Sasuke’s new status under wraps, but you can’t leave him not knowing. There’s a lot of denial and yelling, and you know that Tsunade got the same treatment that you did. You think that he’s almost relieved by the time that Jiraiya comes to take him away.

Naruto goes with Jiraiya, and Sakura leaves your tutelage to train with Tsunade. While it seems like a good choice for your students, you are suddenly left without them to train and deal with. A year and a half, but it feels like much longer than has passed since you were gearing yourself up to walk into a classroom and meet them for the first time. You don’t really know what to do with yourself, until Tsunade offers you the first of many solo missions. You dive back into that lifestyle, knowing how unhealthy is it, knowing that this is how you crashed in ANBU, knowing that you couldn’t keep this up for long, couldn’t hide from your emotions forever. But in the interim, it feels really, really good to do what you are best at, and not have to _think_ or _question_ , and just be Tsunade’s tool for whatever she needs done.

You’re right, of course. Six months in, and you come back broken and bleeding, and you need to stay in the hospital for a few days on life support before Tsunade is confident that you’re not going to die if she looks the other way. By now, your terrible readmittance rate is very well known to her, and you aren’t sure if she approves of you pushing yourself so hard or not. On one hand, she knows that she can give you almost any mission and you’d get it done; on the other, you come back with fairly major injuries nearly every time that you complete a solo. She fusses over you and mutters low curses under her breath as she stitches you up, and you bemusedly listen to her as she berates you for getting injured. As soon as the life support is taken away, you get antsy, the small hospital room too cramped for your liking. This happened in the break in the Academy’s timetable, so Iruka finds you sitting in a chair by the window instead of unconscious in the bed when he hurries into your room, fresh from a mission. He hasn’t changed into a vest that’s clean, and you can see blood splattered among the dirt. He bites his lip, and sits down in one of the chairs, hanging his head for a few minutes. You let him go through what he must be feeling. He’s seen that you’re alright, so he just needs to get the rest of it out of his system. When he looks up, he simply looks resigned. “In the hospital again?” You shrug, and he sighs. “Tsunade told me what happened. She’s suspending you from missions for a month. And she wants you to stay with someone so you don’t keel over on your floor and stay there until someone happens upon you.”

“The dogs can keep me company,” you say. Iruka levels a look at you and you resist the urge to gulp.

“Kakashi, don’t make me drag you to my place. You’re staying there so I don’t have to repeat this morning.”

“Okay,” you acquiesce. You know not to argue when Iruka’s like this, and you’re pretty sure that having someone around isn’t a terrible idea.

Iruka insists that you sleep in his bed when you’re discharged. You heal as you spend days going through his bookshelf for books to read that aren’t about how to take care of small children. Iruka buzzes around you, nearly always looking harried. When he isn’t teaching or outside Konoha on a mission, Tsunade has been using his unusually high clearance level to help her settle into her office. His previous experience when dealing with a Hokage is apparently not enough to know how to work with Tsunade. You’re amused by his rants about the office, which are mostly just rants about how he keeps discovering _more_ bottles of liquor stashed around when he lifts a new pile of paperwork.

Summer storms come, and with them, dry lightning. You sit by Iruka’s window, staring out at the forks of lightning as they pierce the darkness of the night. Your skin itches and your hair is standing on edge more than it normally does, your chakra alert. The only thing keeping you from joining the other lightning users you know are awake and outside is the wards in the walls. Iruka arms them before you go to bed, and you don’t want to wake him up to have him let you out. That, and he’s still convinced that you shouldn’t be leaving the apartment, and probably wouldn’t approve of a three am trip so you can feel real lightning dance over your skin.

You settle for watching the storm instead. A soft creak makes you turn your head. Iruka is standing in the entrance to the hall, rubbing his face tiredly. “Kakashi?” He mumbles. “Why are you awake?”

You look out towards the lightning storm again, suddenly feeling a bit open. You’re not wearing any of your normal gear, which should tell Iruka how at home you feel here. How you consider it safe. You hitai-ate is somewhere in Iruka’s room, and you’re not wearing your mask. Iruka is just in soft pyjamas though, so you weigh up the differences and find them about equal. It’s dark, as well, and that lends itself to an illusion of privacy. You wonder if that’s why people are more prone to spill their secrets at night. Iruka settles down at his kitchen bench and doesn’t say anything for a long time. You almost forget that he’s there, as you watch lightning spark and dance across the sky.

“You need to take care of yourself.” You still, and then turn to look at Iruka. He’s more awake now, and his eyes are looking at you with a type of fierceness that surprises you. “I know that most of your missions are classified, but the injuries you carry home aren’t. I _know_ you can treat yourself better than you do, because you treat everyone the way that you should treat yourself. Don’t think I don’t see how self-destructive your behaviour is. I worry about you, Gai worries about, half the jounin worry about you. Please, Kakashi. Take care of yourself. I…” He trails off, and you lean your head against the window frame, mouth dry. You wonder if it is the strange properties of the night that makes him speak further. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

You turn to him slowly, and Iruka’s face is open and easy to read, like it is the majority of the time. You see concern and you see nervousness and you see a touch of fear. You look outside again. The lightning is branching, striking, fierce and free of any restraints that anyone could place on it. You shiver as suddenly you see a deviation in your future – to follow the lightning, wild and free and independent of anything that might try to restrain it? Alone and only wanted because it fascinates people, either by its beauty and power? Or to follow the path that Iruka has given you – people. Himself. To be tied down and given responsibilities and worries and annoyances and to have the people you care about drive you crazy half the time, and infuriate you the other half, and delight you always. Iruka is still looking at you. The lightning strikes outside. (What is the line from that poem? Gai had gone through a phase in your teen years, and while you’d rolled your eyes at most of it, that one had stuck with you: _Two roads diverged in a wood..._ )

You choose.

You turn your back on the lightning and take a few steps towards Iruka. He stands from where he’s sitting at the bench and steps towards you, eyes still searching. You wet your lips and Iruka’s eyes follow the motion. You take a breath and lean in.

Iruka’s lips are soft. He gasps softly, and you cup his cheek ever so gently, barely brushing his skin with your fingers. Iruka settles his hands on your shoulders, and you gingerly pull him towards you.

It feels so very good.

Things get a bit complicated for a few weeks after that, as you try to figure out where you stand with one another, where you should live and how you should live and what you’re both comfortable with. You have a greater sense of disquiet than Iruka, because your mission load is suddenly very light. You don’t know what to do with yourself now that you’re in Konoha for the foreseeable future. Iruka starts up with a new class of students at the Academy, and Juuna pronounces you healed from your near fatal wound. But apparently she thinks it could still act up, so you’re on B-Ranks for the next month or two until you’re back in fighting shape. That leaves you with time, and time, and time. You sit down one afternoon to decide what to do with it all, and come up with a few ideas. Some are probably more productive than others, but you finally circle one option: figure out the Sharingan.

Itachi told you years ago about the Mangekyou Sharingan. With Itachi a deserter, and Sasuke’s loyalty questionable, it might be useful to develop your own. It’s not as easy as it sounds, obviously, but you set that as your project for yourself for as long as your mission load is restricted. It means you come back to Iruka’s apartment tired and drained at the end of most days, but you think you might be getting somewhere with it. Maybe.

Time skips on, and Gai corners you about Iruka. He seems excessively delighted by it. Tenzou, Kurenai and Miho all find out in their own ways, and all display differing amounts of joy for you. Miho’s fierce grin, the shine in Tenzou’s eyes, Kurenai’s whoop.

You live, and almost forget your past, living in the present. It’s the longest period of peace that you’ve experienced in your life that you can remember.

A year after you and Iruka become official, you come back from a classified A-Rank to find Iruka being cornered by a masked ninja you don’t recognise. The way they move doesn’t say ANBU, though – oh no. It screams Root. You coolly tell them to leave, and check Iruka all over frantically. Iruka doesn’t understand who the ninja was, and you grimace when you tell him that you can’t say. Iruka frowns at you. He knows that you can’t share information that he doesn’t have to clearance for, but you don’t think he understands why he can’t know about this – after all, he just thinks that that was another ANBU member. You look around and take his hand to lead you both back to your apartment.

You haven’t been here for a while; Iruka’s place is much more welcoming, but it’s a good place to go if you need to crash after a mission. Iruka comes in warily; he’s only been in here a few times. He told you he doesn’t like coming here because he can feel the despondent chakra from your blood that’s stained almost every inch of this place at one time or another.

You sit him down and activate the wards, watching them spiral across the walls, sealing away sight and sound and scent. Iruka looks at the wards appreciatively, and you can tell that he wants to ask about them, but you have other things to tell him about.

You pace while you talk, pausing often, unsure of what you can tell him and what you can’t. Anything about yourself you share, but you’re less liberal when talking about ANBU, and you barely say anything about Root besides the fact that they exist and that the person who had approached Iruka was most likely one of the organisation. Iruka sits through it all with a frown on his face – he’s probably wondering if he can even know all of this. He can – he has A class security clearance, due his work in the Mission Room and the security barrier around the village, as well as his closeness to the Third Hokage.

Iruka asks if the Root member was after him because of his abilities. You can only shrug; you suspect, but you can’t know for sure. Iruka takes that with a hard mouth and then tells you what both of you are going to eat for dinner.

It does make you put things in perspective though. Danzou is interested in Iruka, for a reason that you can only guess at. It probably has something to do with Iruka’s abnormally good sensing abilities. You try to think of a way you can challenge him, but nothing comes to mind. You can’t just attack him, no matter how much you’d like to kick his ass. Being sneaky and trying to get information that way probably isn’t a good idea either – people tend to dislike ninja who spy on their own village. That only really left official channels. Where you don’t have any power.

You blink. Official channels. Where you don’t have any power. Except… you do.

You file the paperwork the next day, and hand it to Tsunade personally. She raises an eyebrow at you – you usually avoid paperwork as if it has the capacity to kill you – and looks it over. Her other eyebrow joins its mate just below her hairline. She flicks through a few pages, checking to see that everything’s in order, before she raises her eyes to you. “Well,” she starts. “This should be interesting, at any rate. Is there a reason you’ve had a change in heart? The Hatake seat on the Council has been empty for years.”

“It just feels like the right time, you know?” You eye smile at her, but she just looks at you disbelievingly. In the two years that Tsunade has been here, you’ve grown close to her. If she needs any advice that her advisors can’t give her, about what’s really happening in the ranks, then she comes to you. If she needs advice about how to deal with her advisors who won’t leave her alone, she comes to you. If she needs someone who she can rant to while she berates you for getting injured once more, you can usually provide that as well.

You try not to think about it, but you know that if you do become Hokage (perish the thought) having allies and experience with dealing with the Council probably will come in handy.

You upset the balance of the Council, and gain yourself few allies in your first few votes, but Hiashi was trying to pass some stupid bill about rescinding the age limit at the Academy, and you know that if Iruka found out that you let that pass, he’d probably set you on fire. So you do it for that, and well, just because Hiashi is stuffy and treats his daughters like shit and you don’t like him. Most of the time Tsume just yaps on, and Shikaku looks like he’s struggling to stay awake, and whatever civilian representatives that are there just look like someone slapped them for the entire time they’re in the same room with all the ninja. Although, the casual amounts of killing intent that are considered to be a gauge of how serious you are about the points that you make, alongside whoever you’re arguing with, probably scares them shitless. So maybe they have a reason to be making that face. You prefer Tsume’s second to Tsume, honestly. Tsume is the one who normally drags everything on in meetings, arguing every point she can. Inuzuka Tanaka is much calmer and gets straight to the point, only stopping the discussion if she has a serious issue with what’s being said. Although she does seem overly formal with you sometimes. You chalk it down to the Inuzuka and Hatake Clans never really getting on well – the Inuzuka felt that you trespassed on their territory, what with your dog summons. You try not to let her attitude effect how you talk with her.

You are twenty nine and you start investigating chakra bonds. You don’t say anything to Iruka, because well. You’re not sure, and you don’t want to seem presumptuous. You look into the matter quietly, over a few months, all the while taking on missions and dealing with Konoha’s drama and coming home to Iruka and his slowly-getting-better cooking.

Then things start going sideways – Danzou tries to kidnap Iruka, everyone seems to know your supposedly clandestine research on chakra bonds, and you have to relocate to the Hatake Compound while Iruka’s apartment is being rebuilt. The memories that are hidden there deeply unsettle you, but you can deal with them for a few weeks while you don’t have anywhere else to go with adequate protection. Of course, the answer to that should have been getting a mission outside the village, but Tsunade sends you on a terrible political mission that you never want to talk about ever again. You don’t really want to leave, what with nothing around Danzou being resolved, but he knows that you know that he wants Iruka. If anything happens to him, Danzou will have a big fat target on him, and screw the laws of the village, you’d go after that fucker faster than you can say ‘I’ve been wanting to do this since I was sixteen years old.’ You finish the mission, and are more than glad to put it behind you. You come back to Konoha, and have the longest debriefing that you can ever remember.  You finally leave the Hokage’s Tower, only to come face to face with _her_.

Inuzuka Airi has a startling similarity to you. You suppose Hatake genes must be fairly strong – you know that you look almost exactly the same as your father. Your hair, perhaps your most defining trait, has been passed onto her, although her colour is more grey while yours verges on silver. You aren’t quite sure what to make of her, so you teach her some basic lightning techniques and then drop her off at her house, where you learn why Tanaka was always so formal with you.

You have a daughter. Well, daughters, if what Tsunade said is to be believed. You’re not quite sure what to do with the information. You brood over it, before deciding that none of your kids need you; you’re a mess. You have almost no relationships, you have no idea how you’d even begin to deal with a ten year old, and you kill people on a regular basis. Leaving them alone is probably the best thing you can do for them. You try to ignore the voice in the back of your head that’s whispering, muttering. (You are afraid of what you will do to them if you see them. How you will pass along your issues, how you will deal with them – what a terrible role model you’d be for them. But, you are also relieved to make the decision, because you are scared. Scared of what you might see mirrored in them.)

You spend days trying to get over it. Iruka knows that it’s putting you off, and he’s a balm to you, more than you deserve. You aren’t sure what he sees in you. You are just very, very glad that he accepted your proposal.

Tsunade asks you if you’re certain, and then Iruka. You both say yes, and you try to calm the raging joy in your soul. Calm. You have to be calm, or you’ll upset the joining process. You close your eye, and then you’re in darkness. You struggle towards the pinprick of light that you can see, only to realise that it’s Iruka, and that you can almost feel Tsunade next to you, her hand on your shoulder. You try to get closer, but she’s stopping you from touching.

Tsunade disappears, and you are drowning in Iruka, Iruka, _Iruka_.


End file.
